It seems like anyone who cares about nutrition these days can’t stop talking about the latest and greatest superfoods.
But what is a superfood exactly?
In this article, we’ll explain what superfoods are, the benefits of superfoods, what foods are considered superfoods, and the best ways to incorporate them into your diet.
What Is A Superfood?
A superfood is a name for any plant, fruit, seed, grain, meat, or other food that has an extremely high nutritional value. There’s actually not an official standard for what’s considered “extremely high”.
Every time you hear someone talk about one superfood or another, just assume that it’s, at a minimum, healthy, nutritious, and good for you.
Superfoods are great because they can pack a ton of nutrients into a relatively small amount of food. This lets you supercharge your body with the nutrition it needs without eating huge amounts of fruits and veggies.
Superfoods can be high in:
- Fiber
- Antioxidants
- Minerals
- Vitamins
- Flavonoids
- Healthy Fats
Superfoods have also been gaining popularity in recent years as a way to promote healthy eating and have become an essential part of our modern culture.
Some popular examples of superfoods and their benefits include:
Avocados: Packed with vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats to provide numerous health benefits. They are full of vitamins C,E, K, and B6, as well as lutein, beta carotene, and omega-3 fatty acids.
Legumes: Not only are they rich in fiber and other essential vitamins and minerals, they are also packed with antioxidants that can help fight cell damage, disease, and aging.
Salmon: A great source of omega-3 fatty acids, a type of heart-healthy fat that can help reduce inflammation and support brain health too.
So ... What Are The Benefits of Superfoods?
Superfoods can be a great source of nutrients and accompanying health benefits. Superfoods can offer several health benefits such as:
- Help heal the damage in your body caused by free radicals and oxidative stress through antioxidants and polyphenols
- Help heart health
- Assist with building a strong immune system
- Prevent cancer
- Lower cholesterol
- Reduce inflammation in the body
What Are Some Types Of Superfoods?
There are tons of different kinds of superfoods out there, and they can be roughly categorized into different groups as well. Here are some of the most common groups of superfoods...
Green superfoods
Green superfoods include a variety of fruits, berries, nuts, herbs, and veggies. If it isn’t obvious by the name, they are green or greenish in color. Green superfoods are especially rich in those antioxidants we mentioned earlier. If you’re suffering from inflammation, it can be helpful to incorporate more of these green superfoods into your diet.
Not only are these green superfoods high in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, they contain a ton of fiber too. Fiber helps improve digestion. The healthier your digestive tract is, the better you’re able to absorb the nutrients in your food.
Green superfoods can include any of the following:
- Barley grass
- Spirulina
- Wheatgrass
- Alfalfa grass
- Kale
- Spinach
- Parsley
- Broccoli
- Certain rices
- Stevia
- Grape seeds
- Cinnamon
- Green tea
- Wild blueberries
- Elderberries
If you’re looking to add some healthy green superfoods to your diet, reach for anything on this list. Even the extracts from these foods are super helpful when it comes to adding a concentrated dose of superfood nutrients to your diet. All it takes is a couple of servings to get a healthy dose of these nutrients.
Red superfoods
While almost all green superfoods are some shade of green, red superfoods vary more in color. Of course, most of them are red in color (hence the name) but some of them can be purple, orange, yellow, and brown. Like the green superfoods, reds are a great source of antioxidants and polyphenols.
Red superfoods are also great because they can help improve your nitric oxide levels, which can help improve blood flow throughout the body.
Red superfoods can include any of the following:
- Beets
- Sweet potato
- Cabbage
- Amaranth
- Buckwheat
- Millet
- Quinoa
- Chia
- Red apples
- Coffee
- Broccoli Sprouts
- Onions
- Quercetin
- Tomatoes
- Acai
- Garlic
- Turmeric
- Carrots
- Mangosteens
- Camu camu
- Blackberries
- Blackcurrants
- Raspberries
- Chokeberries
- Sweet cherries
- Cranberries
- Grapes
- Apricots
- Mangos
- Oranges
- Pineapple
- Strawberries
- Tart cherry
- Goji berries
- Pomegranates
You can combine both green and red superfoods to have a synergistic effect on your health and wellness. The green superfoods help improve digestion, while red superfoods help improve blood delivery. Together, these help your body absorb as much of the nutrients from food as possible.
What Are The Easiest Ways To Add More Superfoods To Your Diet?
It’s always worth making an effort to eat superfoods whenever possible.
But it’s clearly impossible to eat every red or green superfood every day. It’s even difficult to consume many of them on the same day.
One thing you can do ... is create a green or red smoothie and drink your superfoods. This is one of the easier ways to add a bunch of superfoods to your diet.
You can juice them too, if you have a juicer. However, this method requires a lot of groceries and a lot of time - time that most people don’t have.
A third option is to supplement your diet with a superfood supplement of some sort.
1st Phorm Superfood Supplements Make Nutrition Easier Than Ever
1st Phorm makes two different superfood supplements. There’s Opti-Greens 50 and Opti-Reds 50. You can even buy these supplements together in our Opti-Health Stack.
Superfood supplements are a great, cost-effective way to pack a ton of nutrition into one drink. There’s no mess, no shopping, no grocery bills, and no food rotting in the fridge. All it takes is some water, a shaker cup, and a scoop of the Greens, the Reds, or both!
You can even throw a scoop in a smoothie that you already make to supercharge it with extra nutrition. No matter how you decide to increase your nutrient intake, supplements can be a big help to get what you need every day.
Supplements are the most convenient way to get the nutrients you need, including vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and polyphenols. Of course, you could pick up any greens or reds supplement that you like, but at 1st Phorm, we pride ourselves on giving you nothing but the best.
You need the best if you want to feel your best.
Get The Nutrition You Need For The Life You Want
Fitness goals vary from person to person.
Maybe you’re looking to lose weight. Maybe you’re looking to gain muscle. Maybe you’re just looking to stay healthy year-round.
No matter what your health or fitness goal is, your body still needs the proper amount of nutrition. And that nutrition can be hard to get sometimes … especially if you have some competing goals, like weight loss or muscle gain.
Superfoods are a great way to meet your nutritional goals while you work toward those other goals at the same time.
If you haven’t tried Opti-Greens 50 or Opti-Reds 50, they can help you get the nutrients you need … so you can look and feel great!
Your body will thank you for it.
