Are You Being Taken For A Superfood “Ride”?

When it comes to health there is always a new superstar food, supplement, herb or drink that is touted to cure cancer, reverse aging, prevent heart disease and pay off your mortgage (OK, I made that last one up – but hang on – some of those MLM companies DO claim that!!).

I always keep the skeptical part of my brain in place when I’m presented with the new wonder product, and try to look at it objectively – and a lot of the time it is just a load of hype and not much substance.

Now the original forms of the berries and fruits used in the “superdrinks” (noni, xango, goji, acai etc) are fantastic – but once you take the juice of these beautiful foods and process and preserve them for mass manufacture – you’ve lost a lot of what made the food superior in the first place.

And the hype on some of these products is amazing!  We have to keep a bit of a balance here.  I could get a simple fruit – let’s say a common blueberry – and analyse it to death to get the nutritional profile of it – compare it to other fruits or foods so that it looks incredible – make a special drink out of it – and then hype it as the latest fad product.  I would find some people who ate the “Standard Appalling Diet”, and give them the  “Blueberry Balderdash” drink in place of the soft drink and alcohol they have every day, and “hey presto” they feel better, look better and become raving fans….

Does that sound a bit cynical? 🙂  Probably, but all I’m saying is that there are hundreds of beautiful fruits and vegetables out there with healthful properties that we haven’t even begun to discover yet.  So yes, there can be benefit in the latest wonder food /drink / product, but just take the hype with a grain of salt and eat lots of fruit and veg, add superfoods if you choose to, but don’t think the latest marketing fad is going to change your life the way consistently eating a high quality raw food diet will.

Dr. Mercola wrote a good article about this very subject, highlighting the Acai Berry, which is one of the latest fad products – (that’s not to denigrate the original berry by any means, it is a very nutritious food)…. Read the article here

Leisa