Yahoo Lifestyle Choose the Best Superfoods
Nutritional science has found that many superfoods—nutrient-dense foods with medicinal properties—can help you lower cholesterol and blood pressure, ward off heart disease and cancer, maintain a healthy weight and improve your mood and vitality.
A study published in the British Medical Journal highlights a number of benefits, suggesting that introducing ‘polymeals’- combinations of superfoods such as red wine, dark chocolate, almonds, garlic, oily fish, fruits and vegetables - into your diet could reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by more than 75 per cent and increase life expectancy by six years.
Among my favourite superfoods are karengo fronds, delicious seaweed fronds you can eat raw or add to soups, pasta and salads (pacificharvest.co.nz). These sea vegetables are rich in vitamins and minerals, including calcium, magnesium and zinc. And I’m a big fan of Dr Red blueberry, ginger and rosella punches and olevine-purple-carrot concentrate. These contain turmeric; citrus; berries; tarragon; and extracts of ginger, olive, grape and green tea. You can drizzle them over yoghurt or ice-cream, add them to smoothies or mix them with either hot or cold water to make a health-boosting herbal tonic.
I also like to start my morning with a super soy smoothie consisting of at least three serves of fruit and berries, along with cinnamon, nutmeg, psyllium husks, almonds and yoghurt.
And I often add some Dr Red punch, rice or pea protein, or vitamin C powder. This provides a delicious, nutritious, satisfying breakfast that sets me up for my whole day and ensures that superfoods are part of my staple diet. That’s the key: be sure to choose foods you can easily add to your daily eating plan.
Mix and match these superfoods to benefit your body
Fruits (such as berries and pomegranates)
Fermented foods (such as tempeh, miso and yoghurt)
Nuts (such as walnuts and almonds)
Herbs and spices (such as garlic and ginger)
Olives
Seaweed
Sprouts (such as alfalfa or pea)
Turmeric
Green or Tulsi (holy-basil) tea
Red wine
Dark chocolate
Leafy-green and dark-coloured vegetables
By Marc Cohen, professor of complementary medicine at RMIT University (Melbourne) and Prevention’s natural medicine expert.
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