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What’s so super about super foods? - 1843 Magazine
Manufacturers claim they make us live longer and healthier lives. Bee Wilson chews over the evidence
We live in an age of upgrades. We expect our broadband to be lightning fast, our TV to be high definition – and our food to be super. Search for the word “super” when doing an online grocery shop and you’ll be faced with an array of super berries, super seeds and super grains. Their selling point is not so much their taste but the extent to which they will enhance your health if you consume them, from increasing your muscle mass to reducing fatigue or prolonging your life. Such qualities are not mere add-ons, like cereals fortified with vitamins. Instead, the powers that a superfood offers apparently come from a force deep within it.
Once seen as faddish, these days many of us routinely buy items labelled as superfoods. This is partly because some regular foodstuffs such as broccoli and spinach have been rebranded for their health-giving qualities. Sales of once-exotic foods have been boosted by their newfound publicity. The volume of blueberries and cranberries sold in Britain quadrupled in the decade to 2018, at a time when the nation’s fruit and vegetable consumption was falling. Many supermarkets, particularly in wealthy urban areas, now routinely stock previously little-known products such as freekeh or kefir.
Manufacturers claim they make us live longer and healthier lives. Bee Wilson chews over the evidence
We live in an age of upgrades. We expect our broadband to be lightning fast, our TV to be high definition – and our food to be super. Search for the word “super” when doing an online grocery shop and you’ll be faced with an array of super berries, super seeds and super grains. Their selling point is not so much their taste but the extent to which they will enhance your health if you consume them, from increasing your muscle mass to reducing fatigue or prolonging your life. Such qualities are not mere add-ons, like cereals fortified with vitamins. Instead, the powers that a superfood offers apparently come from a force deep within it.
Once seen as faddish, these days many of us routinely buy items labelled as superfoods. This is partly because some regular foodstuffs such as broccoli and spinach have been rebranded for their health-giving qualities. Sales of once-exotic foods have been boosted by their newfound publicity. The volume of blueberries and cranberries sold in Britain quadrupled in the decade to 2018, at a time when the nation’s fruit and vegetable consumption was falling. Many supermarkets, particularly in wealthy urban areas, now routinely stock previously little-known products such as freekeh or kefir.