It
started with blueberries, then pomegranates, seaweed and Goji berries. Now a long
list of expensive foods has been hyped to the limit and credited with all sorts
of benefits - increased longevity, improved fitness and memory enhancing qualities
to name but a few. Superfood cookbooks abound and the supermarkets are coining
it in.Is
it all a big con? Jeremy Spencer, of Reading University, believes some claims
about specific health benefits of these foods are untenable and has stated, "Not
only is it completely misleading to break a food down into its component parts
and study those one by one, but it is impossible to predict the reactions of individual
metabolisms to specific foods. Apart from the fact that the effect of the whole
food may be more, or quite different, from the sum of its parts, it is impossible
to say each person will have the same physiological result."
He added,
"People don't eat nutrients, they eat foods. And foods can behave very differently
to the nutrients they contain and they can have a very different effect in someone's
body than they have when examined in a test
tube." The
chief dietician at St George's Hospital in London said, "The term "superfoods"
is at best meaningless and at worst harmful. There are so many wrong ideas about
superfoods that I don't know where best to begin to dismantle the whole concept." It
would seem that just because certain foods are full of a particular vitamin or
nutrient it doesn't mean they are especially good for you. If we ingest an excess
of nutrients and cannot store them then we simply excrete them or if we can't
excrete them in sufficient levels then the overload could actually cause cellular
damage. Nominating
some foods as nutritionally superior can give the impression that ordinary less
expensive foods are somehow deficient. Rather then spending £5 on a punnet
of overpriced berries a family would be better off buying regular and larger quantities
of fresh fruit and vegetables.
So it would appear we are better off eating
a balanced, varied and unprocessed a diet as possible - something akin to the
Mediterranean diet, which is the only diet that has been scientifically proven
to be beneficial.
Some of the healthiest foods we can eat are inexpensive and easy to obtain: - ·
Apples
· Baked beans
· Broccoli
· Olive oil
·
Wholegrain seeded bread
· Salmon
· Tea
· Yoghurt
·
Bananas
· Brazil nuts
In order to get the best out of your vegetables don't overcook them - micro waving
or steaming in a small amount of water keeps the nutrients and vitamins locked
in.
Superfoods
are fashionable but are not essential for a healthy diet - don't be taken in by
the hype.
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