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Superfoods are bollocks


gfweb

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The term "superfood" is a marketing ploy, but that doesn't mean that foods with that label aren't beneficial to health when incorporated into a healthy diet. A big problem with how the public views these foods is that many seem to think that adding an extra avocado or goji berry to the Standard American Diet will make them immortal. And that's silly. You cannot judge the healthfulness or "superfoodiness" of a food item in isolation, but must consider the entirety of a person's diet as well as that person's overall health (e.g. age, weight, insulin sensitivity, etc...). However, if one were to adopt a diet based on whole foods (for lack of a better term) that includes many "superfoods" as keystones.... lots of leafy greens, berries, brassicas, avocados, garlic, pastured eggs, and small, oily fish along, etc, and lots of "superfood" fats like coconut oil, EVOO, and grassfed butter instead of canola, soybean, and corn oil... perhaps replacing sugary sodas and juices with coffee, green tea, and mineral water... that can make a huge difference. But that's a systemic change, not an incremental one. Eating one extra serving of superfood a day won't do much (anything?) for you if the rest of your diet is garbage.

 

 

Edited by btbyrd (log)
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Never fell for any of the superfoods hype. 

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Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

...I just let people know about something I made for supper that they might enjoy, too. That's all it is. (Nigel Slater)

"Cooking is about doing the best with what you have . . . and succeeding." John Thorne

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but if I put sugar on my goji berries will I be OK?xDxDxD

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Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

...I just let people know about something I made for supper that they might enjoy, too. That's all it is. (Nigel Slater)

"Cooking is about doing the best with what you have . . . and succeeding." John Thorne

Our 2012 (Kerry Beal and me) Blog

My 2004 eG Blog

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Having read the article, I do love me some pomegranate and avocado though, and avocado is because it makes me very happy in a salad, and pomegranate juice diluted with sparkling mineral water is one of the nicest things to drink when you are on an alcohol detox. Pomegranate molasses is awesome too. I don't know if I'd ever even thought of them as superfoods though!

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My first wife was absolutely convinced that putting hot water in an ice tray would make it freeze more quickly.  Why?  Because somebody told her that,

 

Today on The Chew Mario Batali repeated the myth that pasta water should taste like seawater.

 

If we can't get that right, how can medical advice be any better?

 

The thing is, when it comes to this nutrition stuff, we seem to have (almost) no clues whatsover.

 

As I understand it, we've very recently come to the understanding that we're are all made up of 90% foreign bacteria and 10% cells with human DNA.  And we've only been studying the human bits (and know next to nothing about the rest),  We still have these Purell stations as a sort of bacterial Trump anti-immigration plan.

 

Until we figure out the whole equation, the whole thing can not be understood.

 

 

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11 minutes ago, jmolinari said:

 

That's not a myth, it's called the Mpemba effect.

 

Still hasn't been confirmed experimentally...despite attempts...according to wikipedia.

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On 8/29/2016 at 9:41 AM, gfweb said:

 

18 hours ago, Tere said:

Having read the article, I do love me some pomegranate and avocado though, and avocado is because it makes me very happy in a salad, and pomegranate juice diluted with sparkling mineral water is one of the nicest things to drink when you are on an alcohol detox. Pomegranate molasses is awesome too. I don't know if I'd ever even thought of them as superfoods though!

 

No disrespect to Jay, but he didn't write this piece. It was written by Leo Benedictus.

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Dave Scantland
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Eat more chicken skin.

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53 minutes ago, Dave the Cook said:

 

 

No disrespect to Jay, but he didn't write this piece. It was written by Leo Benedictus.

 

True enough. I had extracted it from a tweet of his and assumed it was his stuff.

 

At least the 'bollocks' was his.

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18 hours ago, IndyRob said:

As I understand it, we've very recently come to the understanding that we're are all made up of 90% foreign bacteria and 10% cells with human DNA.  And we've only been studying the human bits (and know next to nothing about the rest) [...]

 

And then very, very recently the number being thrown around is 50/50 xD

 

Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body (August 19, 2016)

 

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So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money. But when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness."

So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

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