Animal products with the fat removed do not contribute cholesterol, but have higher concentrations of uric acid forming proteins which contribute to osteoporosis, gout, acid body chemistry, sickness, and aging in general. As foods age, they contain more free radicals than when they were fresh. The fresher a food is the better. However, you would be far better off eating the healthy muffin that had been packaged for several days versus a fresh muffin with white flour, white sugar, eggs, dairy and oil. Drying things like herbs and foods and storing them in light proof, oxygen proof containers, or freezing them, will halt free radical production.
Isolated antioxidants can be somewhat beneficial sometimes.
However, the body's immune system uses free radicals to destroy foreign bacteria. That's 5 times the amount of Vitamin A that would, and does, have toxicity when it is in isolation. Synthetic beta-carotene has not shown much toxicity, but it has been shown to have no beneficial effects in many studies.