What Are Superfoods?

Superfoods are those fruits and vegetables, and other food products, which are so packed with phyto-nutrients and health benefits that they keep the body humming along in harmony, well into old age, and which also work to prevent, and even cure, illnesses and disease.

This is not an official definition. It is my definition. “Superfoods” is more of a nickname for the best types of foods that keep mind and body working most efficiently as science learns more about what health benefits they offer.

That being said, we are fortunate that modern science has now come a long way in identifying more of what these certain types of foods contain and what benefits they bestow upon the body.

Some of these benefits have long been known since the dawn of mankind, but others have only come into focus in recent years. Science still has a long way to go, however.

For instance, there are still things which are not known about, say broccoli, as to why it helps prevent cancer. We may never know all the hows and the whys surrounding these things but we do know that broccoli does the body good.

My mom always wanted us (me, my brother, and sister), to eat relatively good foods and stay away from a lot of sugar, which is what most kids want. So I grew up not craving sugar all the time, unlike my friends, whose parents weren’t so concerned about that.

Sure, I wanted the sweets like all kids do but I was glad, when I got older, that I did not grow up that way. Now we know a lot more about what too much sugar does to the body.

My dad, unfortunately, grew up in a household that did not take any health considerations into account. He stayed away from the foods my mother wanted us to eat, which was baked or boiled rather than fried foods, and instead, preferred to live on fried foods and processed lunch meats mostly.

His idea of a salad was iceberg lettuce, tomato, and onion, all finely chopped with oregano, salt and pepper, with his favorite super unhealthy, toxic dressing. It sounds, and I can assure you, that it also tastes just like a regular Italian submarine hoagie without the lunch meat. If he had added the lunch meat, his “salad” would have surely been nothing more than the fixins for an Italian sub – just add genetically modified,”enriched” bread.

Poor dad has been diagnosed with diabetes before his 60th birthday. It was only a matter of time but it was also completely preventable. We all have choices to make.

Superfoods and Your Health

It’s become much more important today, with the advent of fast food chains and processed, cheap foods and TV dinners to get all natural, whole superfoods into our diets. Just look at the health epidemics that are facing our country and our youth!

Obesity, diabetes, mental health disorders, and chronic diseases whose affects are exacerbated by lack of exercise, have been striking at our children at younger and younger ages at alarming rates.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that health costs are skyrocketing because of these conditions which are avoidable and preventable, at least to the degree in which they are occurring.

We choose to smoke, etc, and we choose to eat unhealthy, and we pay for it in more ways than money. Basically, it is common in America to consume things that are detrimental to our health. The Standard American Diet is truly “SAD”.

But do you know that you can consume other things which promote good health and actually reverse some of the affects of non-healthy foods? After all, “we are what we eat”.

Diets rich in fruits and vegetables may reduce the risk of some types of cancer and other chronic diseases” (July 10, 2003 – US National Cancer Institute, as endorsed by the US Food and Drug Administration).

I don’t know about you but I prefer to go to a doctor that focuses on prevention rather than on treating the symptoms with all kinds of medications. Many of these chronic diseases are a direct result of long term unhealthy eating and drinking.

Of course, the pharmaceutical companies won’t complain if you don’t know about disease-fighting superfoods ( see Natural Cures and Remedies That Pharmaceutical Companies Hate – But Your Body Will Love). Their profits depend on you not knowing! I hope this site can help turn the tables on that.

I don’t think there’s any reason for young kids to be getting Type II diabetes, because everything they drink has some type of synthetic sugar in it. Have you shopped in the drink isle in the supermarket lately? You’d be hard-pressed to find something without sucralose, fructose, or aspartame in it.

Luckily, some enterprising new companies are noticing that and making their own products because there is simply a real need for more all-natural drink products without all that synthetic crap in it.

Baby Spinach

Just being willing to make some small changes in a portion of your diet can go a long way. For instance, if you usually eat iceberg lettuce in your sandwiches or tacos, try substituting shredded spinach instead. The health benefits are 1,000 times greater, if not more.

Why? Because Spinach is a superfood that’s packed with so many health benefits, that science is just now getting around to finding out about many of them which were not known before.

Spinach is just one example of Superfoods which shows how making some subtle substitutions like this in your diet can promote better health in long discovered and undiscovered ways.

Eating superfoods, in my opinion, should be a lifestyle, not part of a specific diet or exercise program that works for a few weeks.

Superfoods should be eaten because they promote health, they taste good, and they make you feel good in general. If you’d like, for $.99 you can check out a kindle book I’ve written on my Top 15 Ultimate Superfoods.

Here’s to adding more Superfoods to your diet!

~Michael James