What are the super foods?

In fact, there is no official unified definition of "superfood" in nutrition. Most of them are general terms for ingredients with high nutrient density and special active ingredients in the context of marketing. Currently, the most recognized categories on the market include kale, chia seeds, quinoa, acai berries, salmon, and natto. Our local wolfberry, iron yam, and fermented black garlic are also often included in this category.

However, this concept has been controversial since the day it became popular. In the two years I have been doing family nutrition consulting, I have encountered people who regard superfoods as a panacea, and I have also encountered people who say that they are all IQ taxes when they hear these four words. Both sides are quite extreme. A while ago, a little girl who had just finished the college entrance examination came to me to make a whitening meal plan. She told me to add two tablespoons of acai berry powder every day, saying that a blogger said that if she eats it for one quarter, she will be two shades whiter. I looked through the imported powder she bought. It cost more than 100 yuan for 100g. Calculating, the two spoons per day cost almost ten yuan. In fact, the anthocyanin content is not much different from that of ordinary blueberries that can buy a pound for ten yuan. If you really want to supplement, it is better to eat two handfuls of fresh blueberries.

This is not to say that these ingredients called super foods are not good. For example, the vitamin K content of kale is more than 15 times that of ordinary butter lettuce, and the calcium content is even higher than that of whole milk of the same weight. Vegetarians can indeed supplement a lot of nutrients that are rare in ordinary green leafy vegetables by eating more every day.； The soluble dietary fiber content of chia seeds is close to 40%. When I am in a hurry in the morning, I soak a spoonful in sugar-free yogurt and add a few small tomatoes. It can keep me full until noon. It is much healthier than the hand pancakes bought on the roadside with a lot of salad dressing.

People who support the concept of superfoods believe that packaging highly nutritious ingredients into an easy-to-remember concept will allow people who usually eat refined carbohydrates and highly processed snacks to consciously add a few bites of healthy ingredients to their diet, which is better than not eating them at all.； Opponents feel that over-marketing by merchants has long exaggerated the value of these ingredients. Quinoa, which costs tens of dollars per pound, is actually about the same nutritional value as mixed beans cooked together. There is no need to pay a premium for the word "super".

To put it bluntly, there are no "super" ingredients that can make you healthy. No matter how nutritious something is, it must be paired with a balanced diet. If you eat fried chicken and drink iced milk tea all the time, even if you eat half a pound of kale every day, you can't make up for the burden that high oil and sugar put on your body. If you really want to eat healthily, it is better to stop worrying about whether the ingredients have a "super" title and eat more different types of natural ingredients.