What’s up Wellness Warriors? I hope you are doing well and enjoying all the things summer has to offer. I’ve got a nutrition adjacent post on the menu for today. I say nutrition adjacent because, as you’ll see, I am trying to define a term rather than give specific advice.
Now to be fair, I tend to stay away from super specific nutrition advice because, frankly, it isn’t within my scope of practice. I mean, as a personal trainer and overall wellness guru I certainly give general advice (like drink more water and eat more green veggies) to my clients and students. I can calculate macronutrient need based on training goals, however; I am not a dietician or nutritionist by trade so I tend to leave specific nutrition planning to those experts.
But as a trainer and teacher, I inevitably get asked about the “super foods.” Depending on which list you are reading, “super foods” typically include berries, dark leafy greens, salmon, eggs, oatmeal, nuts, and legumes among others. Clients often want to know why they should be eating specifically blueberries. What compound in spinach is the savior of heart health? Or what about black beans is so great for digestion?
Well, here is what they don’t want you to know. “Super foods” is a marketing term. Somewhere, years ago, someone had the brilliant idea to call some foods “super” simply because a bunch of studies indicated that they might be linked to positive health outcomes.
This is 100% Diet Culture B.S. Marketers are telling you these foods are the “good” ones and you should be eating them by the truckload because it will cure everything and anything that ails you. Warriors, you know how I feel about labeling food. The other thing that gets me, is that these lists change very slightly based on the prevailing winds of nutrition science (murky at best).
Case in point: kale. Remember when kale was THE leafy green to consume? Anybody remember why? Yeah, me neither. Kale is certainly a healthful choice. But it doesn’t make spinach an unhealthful one. In fact, kale, spinach, collard greens, mustard greens, and the like should, at least in my mind, be thought of interchangeably. They all belong to the same color group and with fruits and veggies, the color is important. (For more on that, check out my Color Me Healthful series.)
The thing is, once you dig a bit further than just the simple view of the food items on the list, you should start to see a pattern emerge. The “super foods” are likely to be whole foods. In other words, these are foods you are likely to find in nature. For the fruits and veggies on this list, that probably means they are also seasonal (although modern grocery shopping has muddied those waters, but that’s a rant for another day).
“Super foods” are likely to be unprocessed. Or can still be easily found in a minimally processed form. In other words, when you are at the grocery store, instead of buying oatmeal in the pre-sized, pre-flavored paper packets that you just mix with boiling water, get the plain rolled oats that come in the cardboard silo. Sure, there might be a few more minutes between you and breakfast, but that’s where the “super” part lives.
The “super foods” are largely plant based. There are some exceptions, and I’ll get to those. But again, take a deeper look at the lists. Oats, nuts, beans, leafy greens, berries, tomatoes. What do all of these have in common? They are plants. Research has shown time and time again that a plant based diet is associated with better Physical Health and better long term health outcomes.
Eggs and salmon are the two most common foods listed as “super” that don’t meat (purposeful typo for the pun win!) the plant based criteria. However, these are minimally processed whole foods. Especially if you can afford organic, free range/wild caught versions.
So my very long winded point here is to not get so caught up in the specifics of the “super foods” lists. As long as the majority of your diet is coming from whole foods, that are minimally processed and mostly plant based (and colorful) then your diet is “super.” No one food will cure all that ails you, neither is any one single food going to be your downfall. All foods fit in moderation and taking a single food out of the context of an overall diet to deify it is just another way Diet Culture likes to bully us. Which is why I’ll continue to use “air quotes” around “super foods.”
Tell us in the comments what your favorite fruit or veggie is and until next time, be well friends!
