This Is What's Wrong With Superfoods
Superfoods. I wonder what’s trending this quarter? Have you ever noticed that what the media deems hot in the diet world just goes round and round on a delicious conveyor belt buffet like one of those Las Vegas sushi restaurants? But if we all were actually getting healthier overall we wouldn’t need to keep receiving tips on ’the latest superfood you need to include in your diet for this or that magical effect.'
It’s a misnomer to keep calling these trending foods super. We expect certain foods to act like superheroes to come clean up the mess caused by the rest of our diet. But as we learned what happens when the Avengers failed to reunite, one hero can’t do it on his or her own. It takes the whole team working as a cohesive unit.
Your overall diet has to be as strong as the original union of the Avengers to fight the bad guys like high blood sugar, excess weight gain, and inflammation caused by eating too much of the wrong foods. This has to be the priority, not trying to have one ‘superfood’ Hulk Smash his way through all the bad guys. We also know that just a few highly nutritious foods likely won’t be adequate for changing your health. Variety is so important to get a spectrum of nutrients, yet most diets in North America consist of only 4 vegetables. That’s not variety; that’s a recipe for scurvy and rickets.
The important takeaway here is that you should be eating a wide variety of foods with freshness being how you know that something is going to be conducive to health or not. Packaged and processed foods need to be eliminated or at least drastically reduced. If the expiry date is longer than the time it will take for the speed of your outdated iPhone to be throttled back, don’t eat it.
If you struggle to avoid junk food, I have a challenge for you. This comes from my book 21 Mindset Challenges and it’s called “Eat a Diet That You Hate.” As a junk food aficionado, your challenge is to go a few weeks eating zero junk food or packaged and processed crap. This is a diet you will hate to follow at first, as the addictive claws of junk food will want to resist this change. You are to eat nothing but fresh vegetables, fresh meats, high-quality fats, and small servings of starchy carbs (potatoes, rice, and other minimally processed crops like buckwheat or quinoa). No cheat meals for this challenge. It might sound hard, nay, impossible to complete this challenge and if you feel that way, I suggest you check out the book on Amazon and start from the beginning of the book with the simpler challenges that will build up your self-discipline and confidence to get through this challenge.
After two weeks of following this strict diet change and completing this challenge, you will feel dramatically different and your body will perform like an actual human being in daily life as well as in physical performances. You won’t need any additional convincing that making a permanent shift towards eating this way will be good for you. No longer will you be jumping on the superfood bandwagon to follow the latest diet fad, since more than likely those foods will have become regularly mixed into your diet.
Pay attention the next time a superfood fad rolls around. If you’ve been working on your nutrition for some time there won’t be anything shocking to you about the ’next big thing.' Nutrition trends come and go like the tide but those who have been surfing the wave for years stay above the controversy and confusion spread by the media.