Blueberries, sweet potatoes, salmon, oh my!
It has become increasingly prevalent in our society to hear about “superfoods”. They are in our smoothies and salads and yogurt cups. But, does anyone know what they actually are? What do they do? Why are they called superfoods? Furthermore, do they do “super” things for our body, like decrease stress levels?
Colloquially speaking, a superfood is a food that is nutrient rich with compounds like antioxidants, fiber, and or fatty acids. They are said to be beneficial for health and well being. Scientifically speaking, there is no true definition of a super food; the term was created by a banana company in the early 20th century to sell more bananas. Scientists do recognize that certain foods offer high levels of desirable nutrients and are linked to promoting personal health and wellness or preventing disease and sickness, but the actual term carries very little scientific meaning (Staab 2021). The actual term “superfood” is a marketing term for food companies, and a lucrative one at that. Many consumers are looking for healthy, nutritious options, and when they see the word “superfood” on a label they are much more likely to buy the product, even though there is no real scientific meaning behind the word (Staab 2021).
That being said, some foods are still just really good for you, even though calling them a superfood is not necessarily scientifically accurate. My favorite example of a “superfood” is sweet potatoes (Diederichs 2009). Sweet potatoes are a great source of vitamin A and fiber. Another great example of a “superfood” are blueberries. These little guys are packed with antioxidants and fiber; there is a lot of research coming out saying they might aid in memory function and aging (Diederichs 2009).
Another thing eating these “superfoods” can do for you is lower stress. Unhealthy eating can add to the stress your body experiences, and affects the way your body is able to respond to stressful situations. High stress can leave you depleted of nutrients, as being in a flight or fight mode requires you to use a lot of energy. Stress can also cause inflammatory responses. In a book called Stress in Health and Disease, An Issue of Psychiatric Clinics of North America, a study is discussed in which individuals with high perceived stress levels consumed either fish oil high in omega-3 fatty acids, or a placebo. At the end of six weeks, their stress levels were measured again. They found that the group that had consumed fish oil every day had stress levels significantly lower than when they started (Kirsch 2014) . This supports the hypothesis that consuming food high in omega-3 fatty acids, like salmon, will lower perceived stress over a prolonged period of time. The article discussed other ways in which healthy eating affects the way your body handles stress, including lowering inflammation, improving cognition, and an overall lower perceived stress level (Kirsch 2014).
So what does this mean for us? Probably that we all need to have better, more balanced diets. This is something that I am continuously working at; some weeks I do better than others. Mostly, I think I feel more encouraged to eat better now that I know it not only affects my physical health, but also my mental and emotional health through the increase (or decrease) of stress.
Staab, J. (2021). What makes Superfood so Super? UC Davis.
from https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/what-makes-superfood-so-super.
Diederichs, Katie (2009) "Superfoods," Ethos: Vol. 2009 , Article 4.
http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/ethos/vol2009/iss4/4.
Kirsch, Daniel L. (2014) Stress in Health and Disease, An Issue of Psychiatric Clinics of North
America.
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ReplyDeleteThanks for the interesting read! I wish more of the general population could read this because I feel like a lot of people including myself never really learned much in school about nutrition until college. Even when informed, there are people who unfortunately don't have the means or time to obtain proper nutrition and I wish that we as a society could fix this because proper nutrition is so important!
ReplyDeleteSomething that I've been really interested in are reactive oxygen species, mitochondria functioning, and antioxidants like blueberries. In a 2019 study, researchers found that blueberries have anti-inflammatory antioxidant actions and that people who consume blueberries regularly have a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, improved weight maintenance, and neuroprotection. In a 2014 review, researchers noted that reactive oxygen species have been found to inflict mitochondrial damage which can have severe effects. Mitochondrial damage can increase reactive oxygen species generation, damage mitochondrial DNA which accelerates aging, and engage immune and inflammatory processes. Through these processes, it can result in many deleterious outcomes such as organ and systems failure, elevated blood pressure, contribute to cardiovascular diseases, and physical and cognitive decline. These deleterious effects are exacerbated with unhealthy diets. Therefore, we should take your advice and do our best to consume a more balanced and healthy diet!
Kalt, W., Cassidy, A., Howard, L. R., Krikorian, R., Stull, A. J., Tremblay, F., & Zamora-Ros, R. (2020). Recent Research on the Health Benefits of Blueberries and Their Anthocyanins. Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.), 11(2), 224–236. https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmz065
Picard, M., Juster, R. P., & McEwen, B. S. (2014). Mitochondrial allostatic load puts the 'gluc' back in glucocorticoids. Nature reviews. Endocrinology, 10(5), 303–310. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrendo.2014.22
Wow Molly, I absolutely loved this post! What really got me hooked was your opening line “blueberries, sweet potatoes, salmon, oh my!” because my favorite fruit are blueberries and I am slowly coming to like sweet potatoes more and more, and salmon is that staple fish that provides good protein when you need it! I thought this post was super interesting, and I never knew that about the word “superfood!” After reading this, the superfood spinach came to mind! This was a green that was talked about a lot in my biochemistry class I took last year, for it is my professor’s favorite leafy green! She always said to stuff your face with spinach whenever possible, for it would give you the nutrients your body needs beyond your everyday food items (which may or may not be “healthy” at times). I think this is a superfood to add to your list (although blueberries are the absolute best on the list), and here’s why! From a study I found titled “Extraction, Identification, and Potential Health Benefits of Spinach Flavonoids: A Review,” the authors noted that spinach is shown to possess anticancer, antioxidant, α-amylase, bile acid binding and anti‐inflammatory activities (Singh 2018) (and I also thought this is perfect since we just got done talking about digestion in lecture!) since it is rich in several health promoting compounds such as carotenoids, flavonoids, ascorbic acid, chlorophyll, vitamin E and nitrate (Singh 2018), just to name a few. In this study, the authors extracted these vital compounds in spinach and analyzed them. By doing this, they saw that their spinach extracts have various functional properties, including antiproliferative, anti-obesity, hypoglycemic, lipid-lowering, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant activities (Singh 2018), and they saw that flavonoids were the ones with the most health benefits. In your post, you talked about improved cognition, and spinach aids with this as well, although these authors did not speak to that as much. I also found another study that said spinach-derived phytochemicals and bioactives are able to (i) scavenge reactive oxygen species and prevent macromolecular oxidative damage, (ii) modulate expression and activity of genes involved in metabolism, proliferation, inflammation, and antioxidant defense, and (iii) curb food intake by inducing secretion of satiety hormones (Roberts 2016). Wow, crazy, right? After learning back in my biochemistry class that spinach was capable of providing you with some serious nutrients, I made a permanent change to always get spinach whenever I can (because let’s face it, who wouldn’t love that extra dose of nutrients?). This is a serious superfood, and one I think you might enjoy!
ReplyDeleteRoberts, Joseph L., and Régis Moreau. “Functional Properties of Spinach (Spinacia Oleracea L.) Phytochemicals and Bioactives.” Food & Function, vol. 7, no. 8, 2016, pp. 3337–53. Crossref, doi:10.1039/c6fo00051g.
Singh, Jashbir, et al. “Extraction, Identification, and Potential Health Benefits of Spinach Flavonoids: A Review.” ACS Symposium Series, 2018, pp. 107–36. Crossref, doi:10.1021/bk-2018-1286.ch006.