A year or so ago, a cousin living abroad messaged asking for an Indian diet plan. I told her she didn’t need one, but she anyway found an Indian site that apparently "reverses" diseases with food (that itself should have been a big red flag) and then sent me an exotic, expensive diet plan that she had been prescribed, full of items like chia, quinoa, kale and other new age, yoga asana-like meme foods. Seriously !
Superfoods are foods that by themselves are supposed to miraculously improve your health. They change color and names depending on the fashion of the day. A few years ago, it was all about quinoa and chia. Then kale. At some point, arugula. Weird kinds of berries including goji berries. Turmeric. Strawberries and blueberries. The names and lists keep changing faster than the conspiracy theories behind Kate Middleton’s absence from public life. A simple Google search will show different superfood lists in different years on different websites, those items not making the cut looking like those Big Boss losers that no one really misses or remembers the next day.
All these influencer and similar sites follow the same pattern and use the same combination of the words below to describe the advantages of these so-called superfoods.
• Nutrient dense
• Anti-oxidant
• Immune booster
• Detoxifying (as if our body has toxins that accumulate and need to be purged - this only happens if you can't shit or piss as a medical condition - toxins don’t build up in normal individuals).
• Increased energy and vitality
• Anti-cancer
A typical statement describing a superfood will usually sound like this, "the poppy berry (I've just made this up) is an amazing nutrient dense superfood that boosts immunity while flooding the body with antioxidants, removing toxins without adding calories, increasing energy and vitality and preventing cancer".
This is not a recent phenomenon. The Roots of Ayurveda, a book by Dominic Wujastyk that traces the history of Ayurveda through the ages describes how garlic became a superfood in the middle of the last millennium and then of course how the fruit of the poppy plant (opium) became part of virtually every doctor's armamentarium in the 16th to 19th centuries (though once you ingest an opium preparation, every food will anyway look, taste and feel like a superfood).
So, if you like kale, by all means go for it. If turmeric incites your passion, then sure, have it. If chia seeds tickle your fancy and make you happy…please by all means. But that would be for the joy of having those particular food items, not because you believe these are "superfoods”, whose ingestion will suddenly and magically make you healthier.
The problem is us, isn’t it? We all want a magic bullet to bite, that one thing that will magically make us healthier and increase our healthspan, or help us lose weight or control our diabetes or hypertension or our high LDL levels or prevent cancer or give us immunity against infections…a bullet that the big guns (companies and influencers) are able to exploit so beautifully.
And they are so experienced at making you feel inadequate, as if by not ingesting these superfoods, you are doing something wrong and not taking care of your body. The guilt trip then gets you to spend money on buying these superfoods and change your eating patterns, instead of just focusing on a balanced plant-based sensible eating plan while keeping the calorie intake in check.
There is no such thing as a superfood. No single food item can make you suddenly healthy. What does help is a predominantly plant-based diet with lots of fruits, vegetables and nuts, as few ultra-processed foods as possible and some form of calorie balance.
Unfortunately, sensible plans are not really glamorous. Between someone who told you to add avocado and walnut and blueberry to your meals as against an apple or chikoo or bajra, who would you be more inclined to follow?
So, what should you and I do? Simple. If you find any food item that has words like "immunity", "detox", "antioxidant", "nutrient-dense", in their packaging or advertising, raise your eyebrows like Jeeves, give a half smirk that says you know better, drop it and walk away.
And by the same token, the moment any person, whether it be a doctor or a dietician or a nutritionist or a health influencer or trainer or just about anyone who fancies themselves as an expert on diet and nutrition brings up the word “superfood”….be skeptical, ask questions and if all you get our answers that start with, “in my experience”, or “I have read…”, or “I have seen two cases…”…then…run away.