In a world where people are getting busier and waistlines are getting bigger, many look for an easy solution to stay healthy; enter “Superfoods.”
But new research shows these foods which promise the world, are often hard to find and are sometimes just plain weird, may not be as wonderful as they claim to be.
Some of the most notable fads in recent time include wheatgrass shots, goji berries, raw coconut oil and pomegranate juice, but research shows many of these “superfoods” provide no more nutritional benefits than everyday staples available in supermarkets, Victoria Lambert writes for the London Telegraph.
Goji berries, freshly squeezed pomegranate, organic raw coconut oil… such exotic fruits have been widely tagged as “superfoods” that reportedly help you live longer – but, by golly, the hunt for them in the local supermarket drains the life out of you, doesn’t it?
And then you have to make some kind of meal out of them.
Who doesn’t prefer a proper supper, such as fish pie with two veg, perhaps with some (whisper it) tinned peaches afterwards, or a square of darkest Green & Black’s chocolate?
According to a new NHS report, “Miracle Foods and the Media”, many of us have been eating the right way all along, by sticking to tried-and-trusted foodstuffs and ignoring the obscure, often expensively imported, flim-flam forced upon us by enthusiastic marketeers.
So much for all those claims that their products improve cognitive skills, help lower cholesterol, and protect us against heart disease, strokes, diabetes and cancer.
The research, by NHS Choices (the health information website), reviewed four years’ worth of studies in the national media that made various claims about foods – from nutrient-rich açaí berries plucked from Brazil’s Amazon region, to umeboshi, the salty pickled plums eaten in Japan that have been described as “working miracles on the digestive system”.
What they found was that the science behind the claims was often less than thorough.
Now, for the first time, the NHS has endorsed what it considers to be authentic superfoods.
The good news is that all are commonly available on your weekly supermarket shop, and in many cases you’re probably already buying them.
Read the full article on The Telegraph website.