Superfoods?..

truecrippler

I'm planning on going on a ''Diet'' when I head back to Uni this January. I've been reading about Superfoods and their nutrients but each website gives me a list of different ones, which is fairly confusing.

I was also wondering about meat and how to incorporate this into my meals with Superfoods etc? I fish such as Salmon and Sardines are on some lists but some fatless meats could be used perhaps?

I was also reading about Alfalfa shoots/sprouts and how good they are? Is this true?.. I'm having a hard time finding them.

Also I take in a lot of dairy and perhaps salt (already in my foods), is there anything I can substitute?.. Maybe goats milk and sea salt?

I hope to get some valuable information here, cheers .

Macha

I may be slightly biased because I've just finished reading 'In Defence of Food' by Michael Pollan but my advice would be to look back at the history of 'superfoods' and realise what a marketing scam they are.

The best foods for you are the least processed, most natural, whole foods like good quality meat and dairy, along with fresh seasonal fruit and vegetables. In other words, the foods that humans have managed to survive on after thousands of years of trial and error.

Re: salt. From a health point of view salt is salt, whether you get it from sea salt or any other type of salt. The best way to control the amount of salt you consume is to minimise the amount of packaged, processed food you buy (see the common theme emerging?).

He also emphasises that the Western Diet has an imbalance between omega-3 and omega-6 fats. Best way to improve the ratio? Eat food rich in omega-3 (fish, butter, leafy vegetables like spinach) and reduce your intake of foods rich in omega-6 (soy, sunflower and other seed oils).

truecrippler

Well I have been reading about certain "marketing scams" about these foods but I'm still unsure. I know its fairly obvious about what foods are good for you and its blatantly obvious whats not also.

I can point out these good foods when shopping but its me subconsciously not buying due to old routine of buying tasty processed food. With that said, I do love my greens.

I need to include more fruit in my diet but it seems to be a burden eating them during the day... even though chocolates etc aren't? :P.

Thanks for your reply, I'll take your advice .

El_Dangeroso

taconnol wrote: »

I may be slightly biased because I've just finished reading 'In Defence of Food' by Michael Pollan but my advice would be to look back at the history of 'superfoods' and realise what a marketing scam they are.

The best foods for you are the least processed, most natural, whole foods like good quality meat and dairy, along with fresh seasonal fruit and vegetables. In other words, the foods that humans have managed to survive on after thousands of years of trial and error.

Re: salt. From a health point of view salt is salt, whether you get it from sea salt or any other type of salt. The best way to control the amount of salt you consume is to minimise the amount of packaged, processed food you buy (see the common theme emerging?).

He also emphasises that the Western Diet has an imbalance between omega-3 and omega-6 fats. Best way to improve the ratio? Eat food rich in omega-3 (fish, butter, leafy vegetables like spinach) and reduce your intake of foods rich in omega-6 (soy, sunflower and other seed oils).

Precisely this.

corkcomp

Temple_Grandin wrote: »

Precisely this.

my own personal superfoods are - oats, brocolli, berries, brazil nuts, and all fish (not raw). i wouldnt over think it TBH, some sites might list some veg as super foods, others might not .. but its probably safe to say that anything listed as a superfood is ok to consume .. the more variety the better

Macha

truecrippler wrote: »

I can point out these good foods when shopping but its me subconsciously not buying due to old routine of buying tasty processed food. With that said, I do love my greens.

OK a few shopping tips:
-never food shop when you're hungry
-make a weekly food plan and then make a list.
-stick to the list (v important!)
-allow yourself a few treats but try to schedule them for post-work out times when you're body is most able to deal with them.

truecrippler wrote: »

I need to include more fruit in my diet but it seems to be a burden eating them during the day... even though chocolates etc aren't? :P.

Well, I woiuldn't go too mad on the fruit if I were you. There's a lot of fruit sugar in there. What about a handful of nuts and a piece of fruit? Or a handful of nuts and a small natural yogurt? Or a hard boiled egg? You could even make up your own snack bars and bring them in.

Sapsorrow

Tesco sell a good selection of sprouts, your local heath food shop should do aswell. Alternatively growing your opwn is very easy and a lot cheaper.
You could get a soup thermos and bring soups and stews to work/college which is what I do, you can get them in Argos. Otherwise do a big batch of salad the night before to have with dinner and bring in the left overs. When you cook a meal do an extra big batch and freeze portions in individual containers. I always carry around an apple or two and a bag of almonds or brazil nuts etc (Lidl sell nuts and seeds cheaply now but not organic unfortunately) and if you're into it a bit of dried fruit is a good sugar boost.
I wouldn't worry about superfoods being a merchandise fad, I think people are confusing 'functional' foods which tend to be processed with 'super' foods here. Any books I've come across about superfood only ever list whole unprocessed fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds and meats/fish etc..
Don't avoid fruit, just avoid tropical fruit if you're trying to keep your sugar intake low theres nothing wrong with apples and pears and other seasonal regional fruits.

Macha

khrystyna100 wrote: »

I wouldn't worry about superfoods being a merchandise fad, I think people are confusing 'functional' foods which tend to be processed with 'super' foods here. Any books I've come across about superfood only ever list whole unprocessed fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds and meats/fish etc..

I agree but spending a small fortune on pomegranates or goji berries is a waste of money IMO and no replacement for a good diet based on whole foods and plenty of vegetables.

khrystyna100 wrote: »

Don't avoid fruit, just avoid tropical fruit if you're trying to keep your sugar intake low theres nothing wrong with apples and pears and other seasonal regional fruits.

Good point, never thought about it that way.

Sapsorrow

taconnol wrote: »

I agree but spending a small fortune on pomegranates or goji berries is a waste of money IMO

Lol I LOVE pomegranates so I would never consider that a waste of money! I'm writing a lit review at the moment about pomegranate juice and extracts and chronic disease prevention and modification. I agree about goji berries, they're pretty nasty little things anyway, I had loads of them dumped on me last summer because my mum grew them in her green house and I ended up feeding them to the birds! At the end of the day any fruit and veg if fresh and good quality will probably do more good than harm so don't pay too much notice to those branded as superfoods and just shop within your budget. It's better to buy a pound of brocoli than 20g of brocoli sprouts if it means you'll be able to afford to eat a larger volume of veg! The one thing I'd say is to big up your greens (seriously you need to eat quite a lot of these everyday and butterhead/iceberg lettuce doesn't really count) Also focus on colour are you eating a good range of fruit and veg in different colours? Red bell peppers, green spinach, yellow squash, orange oranges, blue blueberries etc..? Variety is the best step you can take to protect youself from nutritional defiicencies of any kind. The protective components of fruit and veg are often related chemically to the colour of the fruit or vegetable.

Sapsorrow

truecrippler wrote: »

Also I take in a lot of dairy and perhaps salt (already in my foods), is there anything I can substitute?.. Maybe goats milk and sea salt?

Good milk substiutes are soya, oat, rice and almonds milks. Goats milk is generally seccomended for those who have an intolerance to cows milk as it's more easily digested (it contains less lactose). You can also get soya cheese's but they're a bit processed to use much.
Don't go for low fat dairy (I know this sounds contrary to other advice but seriously it's healthier) and try find a local cheesemonger or farmer at a farmers market or something who can sell you farmhouse cheese and dairy products (we used to even buy our milk straight from the cow ) produced in Ireland that aren't going to have the crap in them like some supermarket brands do and are derived from pasture fed cows (pretty much all the cows in Ireland are pasture fed). It's also very important to buy organic dairy and meat to minimise your exposure to antibiotic and hormone residues from the animals.
Check your local health food shop for salt products, the best thing to do is to start to eliminate it from your diet. Start by adding miso, soya sauce, liquid amino braggs, herbamare, low salt stock powder etc to your cooking (all available from health food shops) instead of salt and stop adding it to your foods at the table completely. Then try cutting it down in your cooking by enhancing the natural flavours of the foods with spices, herbs, lemon/lime juice etc. so that the food becomes tasty enough not to need it. Your palate readjusts to a very low salt diet very quickly. Avoiding overly sweet foods with help prevent even low level and maybe even unoticed 'cravings' for salt on your foods or salty snacks etc. Positive effects on blood pressure are only observed when salt is pretty much completely eliminated (apart from salt naturally in verg, whole grains etc.) from the diet so if this is an issue for you (ie does it run in your family?) you need to adopt a fairly severe approach to cutting it out.

El_Dangeroso

I think 'superfood' is a bit of a misnomer though. A lot of foods get called superfoods due to anti-oxidant quality, and it's turning out that some anti-oxidants aren't all they were cracked up to be, human trials with them are proving unconvincing at preventing any serious disease.

Also why isn't liver or bone broth promoted as a superfood? The nutrient profile of offal or bone broth kicks the ass of any plant or fruit.

Most traditional populations thrive without goji berries or other food exotic to their region.

Macha

khrystyna100 wrote: »

Lol I LOVE pomegranates so I would never consider that a waste of money!

That's great for you but my point is they're not necessary for a healthy diet, or even an optimal diet. People have survived very happily and healthily before pomegranates were available in Ireland. And their cost would be prohibitive for many people and the superfood tag suggests that a person is somehow missing out if they don't eat that particular food - which is rarely true of the foods that get the label..!

The one thing I'd say is to big up your greens (seriously you need to eat quite a lot of these everyday and butterhead/iceberg lettuce doesn't really count) Also focus on colour are you eating a good range of fruit and veg in different colours? Red bell peppers, green spinach, yellow squash, orange oranges, blue blueberries etc..? [/QUOTE]
Greens & variety - I'd definitely agree with that!

khrystyna100 wrote: »

Positive effects on blood pressure are only observed when salt is pretty much completely eliminated (apart from salt naturally in verg, whole grains etc.) from the diet so if this is an issue for you (ie does it run in your family?) you need to adopt a fairly severe approach to cutting it out.

Can you show a source for the claim that the average person needs to eliminate salt entirely from their diet?

Sapsorrow

taconnol wrote: »

Can you show a source for the claim that the average person needs to eliminate salt entirely from their diet?

Ya no problem just give me a while to dig out the papers they could be anywhere after the holidays.

Sapsorrow

Ok I don't have complete titles or author lists here but anyone with access to pubmed or the likes should be ok to download them.

The inter-salt study (1988) was an epidemiological study that compared the salt inatakes and blood pressure of 10,000 people in 32 countries, when the results were plotted on a graph the relationship between salt intake and blood pressure was only significant when group with extremely low salt intakes were included (people living very tradittional lifestyles like hunter gatherers etc)

Another very interesting one is the DASH study (dietary aprroaches to stop hypertension) Sorry I don't have the year but it's a very famour one and should be easy to find. The DASH sodium trial was a variation on the initial DASH study that worth checking out too. These studies are interesting because they indicated that between control groups (who consumed the same levels of salt) the amount of fruit and veg in the diet had a much greater impact on blood pressure that salt restriction alone.

I'll try and find some more this afternoon, my study room is like a bomb hit it since christmas.

El_Dangeroso

Gary Taubes wrote a brilliant article called The (political) science of salt:

http://www.junkscience.com/news3/taubes.html

He won the Science in Society Journalism Award for the article (he has won this award so many times now he's no longer eligible)

The article is long but worth reading, it does a complete review on how weak the evidence against salt is (he addresses the DASH and Intersalt trials amongst others). Any intervention trials in salt reduction have shown almost negligible decreases in blood pressure, even in the hyper-tensive.

Most of the strong evidence against salt is observational studies, which don't factor in that people who have high salt intakes also have high processed food intakes. Processed food is full of refined carbohydrate which does have a massive effect on blood pressure and this is demonstrable in many studies.

The best salt to use is good quality sea salt as it is packed with other valuable trace minerals.

Sapsorrow

Temple_Grandin wrote: »

Gary Taubes wrote a brilliant article called The (political) science of salt:

http://www.junkscience.com/news3/taubes.html

He won the Science in Society Journalism Award for the article (he has won this award so many times now he's no longer eligible)

The article is long but worth reading, it does a complete review on how weak the evidence against salt is (he addresses the DASH and Intersalt trials amongst others). Any intervention trials in salt reduction have shown almost negligible decreases in blood pressure, even in the hyper-tensive.

Most of the strong evidence against salt is observational studies, which don't factor in that people who have high salt intakes also have high processed food intakes. Processed food is full of refined carbohydrate which does have a massive effect on blood pressure and this is demonstrable in many studies.

The best salt to use is good quality sea salt as it is packed with other valuable trace minerals.

I knew this would interest you, you love yer controversial topics! Thanks for the article, I'm a Taubbes fan but I try to take him with *ahem* a pinch of salt as he can get a little fanatical about things.
Hey thanks this means I don't have to go digging through my study for papers now! I agree with Temple on thius one the evidence is seriouslly weak, like the whole cholesterol controversy, It started out as a theory based on really weak epidemiological associations back in the fifties (I think) and has since just become dogma, and public health authorities don't like admitting they've been wrong and misleeding the public for the best part of fifty years.

El_Dangeroso

khrystyna100 wrote: »

I knew this would interest you, you love yer controversial topics! Thanks for the article, I'm a Taubbes fan but I try to take him with *ahem* a pinch of salt as he can get a little fanatical about things.
Hey thanks this means I don't have to go digging through my study for papers now! I agree with Temple on thius one the evidence is seriouslly weak, like the whole cholesterol controversy, It started out as a theory based on really weak epidemiological associations back in the fifties (I think) and has since just become dogma, and public health authorities don't like admitting they've been wrong and misleeding the public for the best part of fifty years.

Hehe

You can call Taubes a lot of things but fanatical is not one of them. Fanatical implies a belief beyond the facts and all he does is let the facts tell the story.

The very first quote of the article will give an indication of his approach:

"Science ... warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations."

--Thomas Huxley, 1860

Easier said than done I know but all we can do is try