We live in a world where food is part of the problem. We live in a society where you need to be rich to be able to afford healthy food. As always it is in human nature to find easy solutions even to nutrition. If you look at health conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary disease, and obesity, the major contributors would be poor eating habits and poor selection of nutritional food value. This is the truth that we know but we have a hard time accepting. So it is understandable that people will look to superfoods for a solution.

Every food has its nutritional and caloric value. Sometimes the nutritional value can be higher or lower depending on the food we select. The nutritional value of food would be what it consists of. How many beneficial vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants are contained that could benefit our health. The most nutritional value would be in fruits and vegetables, seeds, nuts, herbs, and spices. But also between them, some foods are higher in nutritional value than the rest. And those types of foods people like to call superfoods. The theory about superfoods is that one type of food contains enough nutritional value for all segments needed to provide for all nutritional needs a person could have. Is that possible? Is there such a superfood out there? Let us find out.

How did the superfoods come about?

Where did the term superfood originate? Interestingly, not from those who formally study food, such as nutrition scientists and dietitians. The earliest recorded example may have taken place in the early 20th century around World War I, used as part of a food marketing strategy. The United Fruit Company initiated an enthusiastic advertising campaign to promote its major import of bananas. It published informational pamphlets including Points About Bananas and the Food Value of the Banana. Initially, the company had advertised the practicality of bananas in a daily diet, being cheap, nutritious, easily digested, available everywhere, good when cooked and not cooked, and sealed by nature in a germ-proof package. To get people to eat more, they suggested adding bananas to cereal for breakfast, in salads for lunch, and fried with meat for dinner.

However, the popularity of the term soared after being endorsed in medical journals, due to physicians publishing their findings of a banana diet to treat conditions like celiac disease and diabetes. The American Medical Association announced that bananas in a child’s diet would provide relief for celiac disease or cure it (gluten had not yet been discovered as the true culprit). Bananas soon bore an emblem of health, and mothers made bananas a dietary staple for their children and infants even if they did not have celiac disease. The United Fruit Company included these health benefits in its promotional material and the popular press flaunted headlines about bananas, birthing the banana diet craze.

The second recorded superfood didn’t come for almost 73 years, and just like the first, they are quite common. The US government endorsed blueberries as an incredibly nutritious food in 1991. The king of antioxidants, blueberries are known to offer a whole host of benefits from those properties alone. They also boast several essential vitamins and minerals, yet they are low in calories.

From that point on, hundreds of foods were dubbed superfoods, some that many of us keep in the fridge daily. Others are so exotic no one has ever heard of them before companies announced them as the newest miracle cure. And that’s the thing about superfoods. Often marketing embellishes these foods as something more than they are.

Marketing has discovered that people are more likely to buy and spend more on products labeled as superfoods. This ploy implies that consuming one of these foods very rarely or even just once will “fix” their health. Whether this comes in the form of curing or preventing disease, or miraculous weight loss, people believe small amounts of superfood can change their lives.

Most common superfoods out there

Food trends change all the time depending on the marketing strategies of the food industry, the changes in the seasons, and the availability of the product. It seems that each year there is another superfood being called the best, the most nutritional, and usually it comes with a heavy price tag. Some of the superfoods are quite common but some can be very hard to plant and harvest which makes their price skyrocket. So it is not the health industry that sets the trend it is the food industry that will publish materials, pay experts and nutritionists, and influencers that will promote recipes and change public opinions.

Some of the most common and recognized superfoods in recent times would be of course blueberries, cinnamon, avocadoes, salmon, quinoa, goji berries, kale, chia seeds, and many more. But of course, you can’t use any cinnamon available. It has to be Ceylon cinnamon which is native to Sri Lanka, healthier, and of course more expensive. If you choose salmon as your superfood of course not any salmon will do the trick. Wild salmon is healthier and more expensive. So as you see it even superfoods have different types of nutritional value based on where they are grown, or caught and how much you are willing to pay to have them.

Some of the superfoods come with environmental concerns. Even buying an avocado is not as innocent as you may think. Avocadoes require a lot of water to thrive. Farmers will pull down forests to plant avocado trees hurting the natural habitats of many animal and plant life.

Quinoa is a nutrient-dense, gluten-free grain that comes from the Bolivian Andes, where indigenous peasants have traditionally grown it alongside potatoes, llamas, and alpaca for thousands of years.

With the increasing demand in Europe and the United States for healthy, gluten-free grains, quinoa—which is very high in protein—has become very popular, especially among foodies. But because of this, today, most Bolivians cannot afford to buy quinoa, and the quinoa-growing region of the country is also the most malnourished because those who grow quinoa for export now purchase refined grains to eat from the store. The region also faces decreased soil fertility, as farmers mine their soil to grow quinoa year after year to meet Western demand, instead of using traditional methods of rotating crops with llama pasture to restore fertility and prevent erosion.

Are superfoods real?

Superfood is nothing more than marketing jargon for fruits, vegetables, or other foods considered better than competing items in providing health benefits ranging from fighting disease or aiding in digestion to promoting brain or heart health.

In various healthy lifestyle communities, superfoods are usually exotic plant products that come from faraway lands. These expensive, fashionable foods include things like goji berries from China and Tibet; açai, maca, chia, and quinoa from South America; coconut and durian from Southeast Asia; mesquite, agave, and spirulina from Mexico; and chlorella from Japan.

Every year, the industry seems to “discover” more superfood “miracles” from the recesses of developing nations to sell to American health seekers. While many of these foreign foods are very nutritious why does more and more of what we eat in the U.S. carry such a heavy environmental and social footprint?

For those of us seeking to improve our health, the notion of a superfood can be appealing. We may imagine a powerful food with special abilities like promoting weight loss or healing disease. There’s no scientifically based or regulated definition for superfood, but generally, food is promoted to superfood status when it offers high levels of desirable nutrients, is linked to the prevention of a disease, or is believed to offer several simultaneous health benefits beyond its nutritional value.

Superfoods are supposed to offer profound nutritional benefits. And they are marketed as such. The problem is that it’s not always clear whether the label is deserved because there is no accepted standard for what makes one food super and another merely healthy. Moreover, it’s unclear whether this focus on individual foods is worth pursuing in the first place. The fact is that broader dietary patterns are much better predictors of health outcomes than the consumption of any one food, no matter how healthy it is.

Are there any dangers to the superfood trend?

If you read any article online based on superfoods you will get a list of foods that are considered as such. Usually 5 to 10 foods with nice pictures but very little information. Some basic nutritional values will be listed. If they are high in a specific protein, mineral, or antioxidants but not much else. The information will be short, not very precise, and not explain in broader terms why this specific food is listed under the article. The more articles you read you will notice that the same foods are mentioned but with not many different explanations.

The food industry likes to promote superfoods not only to sell them to you. Of course that is their main goal. But at the same time by promoting superfoods they send a message to consumers that they don’t need to make any significant changes in their current diet. By implementing the consumption of one or two superfoods they are convincing the public that they will be healthy. When in reality to achieve any desired result it is necessary to reevaluate your entire dietary habits to see its weaknesses and then implement changes to actually become healthier. So superfoods are not a substitute for a healthy nutritious diet.

Superfoods provide a false sense that eating healthy means you have to spend a lot of money. Because most superfoods are imported from far away places and some of them are even rare of course the consumers spend more money to get them. But there are cheap, local foods that are also nutritional, available, and delicious that the public doesn’t have to spend a fortune on.

Do not rely on superfoods to fix your health problems. You could eat avocadoes every day but it’s not going to help with your blood pressure. You could buy salmon by the tons but it’s not going to make you live a hundred years old. Making real, long-term achievable goals with fruits and vegetables you can get in your local grocery store would be a wiser investment in your long-term health than spending a fortune for food that at the end of the day you may not even like. Yes, superfoods are full of nutrients and beneficial for your health. But they are not going to solve all your problems. Think of them as marketing hype. In a couple of months, there will be another one, a better one, a pricey one. It’s like an evolution of a luxury brand. You want to have it because it looks good, and it sounds good. Once you finally buy it there is another one just as good, maybe even better. It’s a cycle that is never going to end because food companies need to sell products and make money.