What’s a free radical scavenger? A free radical is an atom, molecule, or ion that’s missing an electron that should be paired up, so it’s on the prowl to get that electron somehow.
So a free radical scavenger is something that can donate an electron to the free radical, behaving as an anti-oxidant. As we saw in the tocopherol above, it can donate a hydrogen atom to those free radicals to quench them, which makes Vitamin E a free radical scavenger!
In other words, it’s an anti-oxidant!
If you’d like to read more on this topic, click here, and scroll down a bit.