What foods are super foods?

In fact, "superfood" is not an official classification recognized by the nutrition community at all. It is a general term in the context of consumption and marketing. It is generally used to refer to foods with high nutrient density, containing special active nutrients, and are considered to have more outstanding health benefits than ordinary ingredients.

The word first became popular because of a pure marketing event. At the beginning of the last century, the United Fruit Company in the United States gave bananas the title of "superfood" in order to open up the market for bananas. They said that bananas are easy to digest, nutritious, and low-priced. They also attracted many doctors to endorse them, and directly sold bananas from rare tropical fruits to daily ingredients for American families. This is how the concept of "superfood" was passed down.

To put it bluntly, the various superfoods on the market today are more like Internet celebrities in the food circle. They have some real advantages, and then marketing amplifies the advantages and hides the shortcomings, and the value has increased several times. A few years ago, I followed the trend and bought Internet celebrity quinoa. At that time, it was advertised as the only cereal that contains whole protein. It can supplement protein even if you eat it to the fullest. After buying it and cooking it a few times, I discovered that to rely on it to supplement the high-quality protein that adults need for a day, you have to eat less than half a kilogram of dry quinoa. The calories are much higher than eating three eggs, and the price/performance ratio is really not high.

It is precisely because of this type of exaggerated propaganda that many regions now have strict control over the promotion of "super foods." The European Union stipulated as early as 2007 that "super foods" cannot be casually labeled on food packaging. Unless clear clinical research evidence can be produced to support it, it will be considered false propaganda. Many practitioners in the nutrition field are also opposed to over-hyping the concept, fearing that it may mislead people into thinking that eating super foods can replace a balanced diet.

That’s not to say that these ingredients called super foods are completely useless. For example, kale’s vitamin K and dietary fiber content are indeed much higher than ordinary lettuce. People who usually eat takeaways and don’t eat enough green leafy vegetables can use it to make a milkshake occasionally, which is indeed more nutritious than drinking a cup of full-sugar milk tea. I'm afraid that some people really believe in the saying that "superfoods are omnipotent" and think that as long as they eat chia seeds and acai berry powder every day, they can ignore their daily diet. I have seen netizens share before, saying that they only ate quinoa and kale for half a month in an attempt to lose fat. As a result, they ended up suffering from nutritional deficiencies and anemia and ended up in the hospital, which was not worth the gain.

If you really have to debate whether to buy it, it's easy. Don't hold on to the expectation that "you can fight aging, lose fat, and cure chronic diseases by eating it." Just buy it if you have enough budget and it tastes good. If you have a limited budget, eat half a catty of fresh green leafy vegetables, an egg, and a handful of grains every day. In fact, the health effects you can achieve are not much different.