My point was sort of that If you look at riboflavin's chemical structure(a key vitamin), it looks like it could be a fairly good antioxidant, and for that matter, a lot of things including amino acids look like they could be antioxidants, however the metabolism and usage of compounds by mitochondria determines they're in vivo antioxidant behaviors. this is why 100 g of l-lysine supplementation will not protect people against Parkinson's but 10mg of selegiline will.
c60 looks very strange to our cells, and I doubt that mitochondria can even degrade c60. so because of this, I assume that mitochondria try to stop antioxidants from exerting effects inside cells, leaving only the weird looking compounds(xenobiotics) that our cells don't properly know how to degrade/modify, to stay in our cells, and act as antioxidants.
Edited by anagram, 23 January 2013 - 09:06 PM.