Are Super Foods the Key to a Healthy Diet? - LifeGoesStrong

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The battle of the super foods has always fascinated me. We live on a planet with more than 390,000 plant species, many of them edible but never sampled, yet there are some who think they have figured out what the Top 10 Super Foods are that we should eat for good nutrition.   

I don't buy it and never did. Any time you limit your diet to a top 10 food list, no matter how virtuous, you are losing the value of variety. 

Eating a wide variety of foods is one of the basic tenets for a healthy diet. This means you should spread out your choices over all food groups and within each one, while also switching it up with the seasons. For example, if you like apples, it's a good idea to buy some from New York State as well as Washington and swop out a Cortland for a Crispin or a Cameo occasionally, too. 

That said, eating an apple a day is not the goal. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that we eat 3-4 servings of fruit every day. That's 1 ½ - 2 cups of fruit 365 days of the year.  Most Americans don't even come close to meeting that goal. 

A 2009 report from the Centers for Disease Control found that in no state were U.S. adults eating the recommended 3-4 servings of fruit a day and only 32.5% were consuming fruit two or more times a day. Debating whether blueberries or pomegranates should hold first place on this year's super food list is a distraction from the more important issue that most Americans simply need to eat more fruit! 

Eating fruit in any form can help close the gap. Fresh fruit is fine when available and affordable, while frozen fruit offers year round value. Canned fruit in unsweetened juice provides convenience and cost savings every day of the week, and dried fruit offers economy of space as well. And what could be easier than drinking a cup of 100% fruit juice once a day? 

My strategy has been to always include a serving of fruit as part my breakfast and lunch, then have another as an afternoon snack. Even if I'm traveling, I can always get a glass of juice on a plane or in a bar and buy some trail mix with dried fruit in any convenience store. When the fruit bowl is empty at home, I always have berries in the freezer for my yogurt, mandarin orange segments in the pantry to toss into a salad and sundried tomatoes to snack on. 

Something as basic as eating more fruit can result in dramatic changes in the quality of your diet. You'll benefit not only from all of the vitamins, minerals, fiber and phytonutrients you'll be consuming, but also because of all the other stuff you won't be. 

Why not keep a list of the different types of fruit you eat over one year to see if you can come up with 100? That's a as a super food list I'd really like to see!

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