Green Superfood Powders:
A Super-Rich Source of Antioxidants

Green superfood powders are specialized foods that have extremely high concentration of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients. They make a great addition to your smoothies and other recipes.

These green superfoods are often combined with each other and other valuable nutrients such as probiotics and enzymes, to make foods that pack in many times the nutritional content of ordinary fruits and vegetables.

Green superfood powders so easy to add to your diet because the serving sizes are so small, usually about a tablespoon or two, that you don't have to completely change your eating habits to start enjoying the benefits.

Some of the most popular foods used to formulate these green superfood products are:

• chlorella and spirulina
• wheat grass and other grasses
• dehydrated green vegetables

Many of these green superfood powders contain nutrients not even available in conventional foods — and often in quantities that would be impractical to get anywhere else. Plus, you get a full spectrum of phytonutrients because these superfoods are whole foods, not supplements.

Recommended Green Superfood Products and Superfood Companies

There are many good producers of green superfood powders available online. The source I recommend for them is iHerb.com

iHerb carries an amazing variety of green superfood powders — over 90 in all! — made by such well-known companies as Amazing Grass, Garden of Life, Greens Plus, Jarrow Formulas, Vibrant Health, New Chapter, Now Foods and many more. You're sure to find the right one for you!

One thing about the taste of these powders — it's best to blend them into a smoothie with something like a nut milk and bananas to cut the bitterness that's typical of dark green foods. Mixing with just plain water won't do for most people. It's easy to experiment with different combinations until you find one that's to your liking.

In general, the better a superfood product tastes, the lower the nutritional density. This is because the most nutritionally dense superfoods — chlorella and spirulina — have very strong tastes that take some getting used to, for most people. If you're fussy about taste, start off with some of the better-tasting brands such as Amazing Grass or Emerald Balance.

Having so many choices can be overwhelming, so I'll introduce you to some of my own personal recommendations.

The Amazing Grass Company

The Amazing Grass Company offers green superfoods that combines the world's most nutritious wheat grass with alfalfa, spirulina, chlorella, antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables, probiotics, enzymes and more.

Amazing Grass is superior to other grass superfood products, including fresh-squeezed wheatgrass juice!

For starters, Amazing Grass wheat grass is grown in the best soil in the world for growing cereal grasses, the fertile plains of Kansas. The grass is field-grown through the winter and harvested just once a year. Other grasses are grown in warm climates and cut seven or more times a year, resulting in a much lower nutritional content.

Cereal grasses planted in the fall and grown through the cold winter are nutritionally superior to crops grown elsewhere because the grass develops a huge root structure that acts as a sponge to absorb nutrients in the mineral-rich soil.

Tray-grown wheatgrass — or wheatgrass juice you find in most juice, smoothie or grocery stores — is also not as nutrient-dense as field-grown, dehydrated wheat grass. Tray-grown grasses are typically harvested every week or two, and aren't given the time to absorb as many nutrients as field-grown grass.

Amazing Grass superfoods have the most pleasant taste of any green superfood I've tried, and would be my recommendation for someone who's trying green superfoods for the first time.

Do you have kids who don't eat enough fruits and vegetables?

Try Amazing Grass Kidz SuperFood! This is a certified organic superfood product that combines more than 30 rainbow-colored fruits and vegetables in a delicious chocolate or berry-flavored drink powder.Add one small scoop to a glass of nut milk and give your kids the antioxidant benefits of 3 servings of fruits and vegetables!

Don't just take my word for it, though. Read what Mike Adams of naturalnews.com has to say about Amazing Grass:

I have to admit that the taste of the chocolate-flavored Amazing Grass is so good that I had a hard time (at first) believing it really contained the nutritional ingredients claimed on the label... If you're trying to get your child to drink superfoods, this is a great product to start with (and you'll love it, too!).

I've given it to lots of kids who otherwise would never eat or drink many of the ingredients found in this product. While there are other products with stronger nutritional density, they don't have anywhere near the great taste of Amazing Grass.

Emerald Balance

Emerald Balance contains over 42 superfoods including antioxidants, bioflavonoids, enzymes, probiotics, herbs and fiber. The primary ingredients include six or more green superfood powders and antioxidant fruit powders, green tea, fiber, probiotics and much more. Emerald Balance products come in minty green tea, chocolate and tropical berry flavors.

Read what Mike Adams has to say about Emerald Balance:

In terms of overall taste vs. overall nutritional density, the Emerald Balance and X Balance products earn my highest recommendation. These products taste remarkably great, even to folks who are new to superfoods. The Emerald Balance product... has a bit of a minty flavor to it, which I find mixes really well with avocados and almond milk. (Really, it tastes like a mint ice cream shake!)

What really impressed me about the Emerald Balance and X Balance products is how they manage to taste so incredibly good even when they have such high nutritional density. It's an art (and a science) to make that magic happen, and the formulator of Emerald Balance (Jan Lovejoy) has done a masterful job of creating a winning recipe.

I strongly recommend this product to anyone who wants to experience an abundance of nutritional benefits from superfoods, but who doesn't want to stomach something that tastes really strong.

You can read Mike's full article here: The Best Tasting Green Superfood Powder Products

X-Balance
Chocolate Superfood for Kids

Jordan Rubin's Garden of Life

Garden of Life was founded by Jordan Rubin, author of The Maker's Diet. His superfood products are individually formulated for weight management, immunity support and digestive health.

Perfect Food Super Green Formula has more greens per serving than other green food formulas. Perfect Food Super Green Formula contains 10 probiotic strains to support digestive health, and spirulina to support healthy immune function.

About 90 percent of the ingredients in Perfect Food Super Green Formula are derived from grasses and algae. It has a stronger taste than most other green superfoods, except for chlorella and spirulina. The Amazing Grass products have a much sweeter, milder taste. As with any green superfood powder, a ripe banana added to your smoothie works better than anything else to mellow out the flavor.

Jarrow Formulas — Yaeyama Chlorella

Jarrow Formulas, based in Los Angeles, California, has been around for a long time — they were founded in 1977. They manufacture an amazing variety of nutritional supplements, over 200 in all!

Jarrow's Chlorella is the Yaeyama variety, the best quality of chlorella in the world. It's grown in the environmentally pristine coral reef region of Japan's Ishigaki Island using mountain spring water, tropical sunshine and food grade nutrients.

Yaeyama chlorella offers rich amounts of chlorophyll, protein, beta carotene and many other nutrients, including something that's called Chlorella Growth Factor, a nutrient unique to chlorella. The phytonutrients in Yaeyama chlorella support healthy cell growth and promote detoxification, especially in removing heavy metals like mercury.

If you're looking for the best bargain in green superfood powders — this is it! A one-kilogram tub of Jarrow Yaeyama Chlorella yields about ninety generous tablespoon-size servings (12 grams) for about 50 cents each!

Chlorella is my personal favorite among all the green superfood powders because of its ability to draw out toxins from your system and eliminate them. Most of the green superfood powders include chlorella in their recipes because its nutritional value is second to none.

Chlorella is very dense, and its taste reflects this. Chlorella has the strongest taste of all the superfood powders I've tried. Spirulina is not far behind. I find that a ripe banana added to your smoothie really helps to mellow out these flavors better than anything else.

Nutrex-Hawaii Spirulina

Spirulina is closely related to chlorella, and comes in a close second to chlorella in nutritional value. It has the advantage of having a slightly sweeter, less bitter algae taste than chlorella, but is still stronger than most green mixed-powder formulas.

Spirulina is often a key ingredient in many green superfood powder blends because of its nutritional superiority. Of course, taking larger portions of straight, unblended spirulina will give you more of the benefits specific to spirulina.

Spirulina is another superfood bargain, especially if you buy the bulk powder. It can be as cheap as 50 cents per tablespoon serving. Spirulina is also available in tablets, although you'd have to take about 15 of them to equal one tablespoon of the powder.

For more information on the benefits of spirulina, and to compare spirulina with chlorella, see the following pages:

iHerb.com carries a good assortment of spirulina powders and blends for you to choose from, including the one I consider the best, Nutrex. Click on the graphic to the right to check it out.

Read some great testimonials about spirulina on the Nutrex-Hawaii website.

One of the easiest ways to add the benefits of superfood products to your daily routine is by using them as ingredients in a morning smoothie.

Superfood powders can turn your ordinary fruit smoothie into a nutrient-dense meal with the antioxidant benefits of 6 servings of fruits and vegetables — your entire minimum daily requirement!

If you're not hip to smoothies yet, they're hands-down the best way to get you going in the morning and keep you going. Anytime you want a quick and amazingly-healthy meal without having to cook, a smoothie fits the bill!

You can discover How to Make Smoothies the Healthy Way elsewhere on this website.

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favorite superfood supplement?

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