Superfood Products for
Antioxidants and Other Valuable Nutrients

Superfood products are specialized foods with an extremely high concentration of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients. You can significantly boost your daily intake of nutrients by adding very small portions of these foods to your meals.

Some of the types of foods used to formulate superfood products are: cultivated field grasses, exotic wild-harvested tropical fruits, blue-green algae, nuts, seeds and roots.

Are superfood products a substitute for fresh fruits and vegetables? Think of superfoods as an addition to your diet, not something that's going to replace the fruits and vegetables you already eat. However, once you compare them closely, you'll see that superfoods are not only more nutritious — they also have several other advantages over fresh produce.

How Nutritious is Your Food Supply?

To really eat healthy, you need quality foods. Maybe you're lucky enough to have a good, reliable source of fresh organic produce nearby, or better yet, you grow your own. However, this isn't possible for most people year-round.

Using conventionally-grown produce means that you're consuming a higher amount of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizer residues. You also don't know how fresh it is — and fruits and vegetables lose nutrients starting the day that they're picked.

Today's Produce Lacking in Nutrients. Today's conventionally-grown produce isn't as nutritious as it was just 30 years ago — and it's only getting worse. In 2004, Donald Davis, PhD, a former researcher with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, led a team that analyzed 43 fruits and vegetables from 1950 to 1999 and reported drastic reductions in vitamin, mineral, and protein content. Using USDA data, he found that one serving of broccoli, for example, had 130 mg of calcium in 1950. Today, that number is only 48 mg.

Davis believes that lower nutritional content is due to the farming industry's desire to grow bigger vegetables faster. The very things that speed growth — selective breeding and synthetic fertilizers — decrease produce's ability to synthesize nutrients or absorb them from the soil.

Organic produce fares much better in similar studies. A 10-year study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry showed that organic tomatoes can have as much as 30 percent more phytochemicals than conventional ones. Why is that? Because they don't get the "benefits" of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers, organically-grown plants experience more stress, and the way they naturally protect themselves is by producing more phytochemicals.

How Superfoods Differ From
Conventional Produce

Growers of superfood products are in the business of making foods with the optimal nutritional content, first and foremost. They pay strict attention to the purity and quality of their food, and take great pains to ensure that they preserve all of the nutrients during processing.

Superfood companies will usually describe, in detail, how their foods are grown and processed on their website, so you know exactly what you're getting when you purchase them. A superfood grower is not going to stay in business long unless he produces foods of the highest quality possible — that's what his customers are looking for.

The suppliers of the superfood products featured on my website were selected not only for the quality of their products, but for their responsible business practices as well — policies such as supporting fair-trade and sustainable, organic agriculture.

Of course, you also don't want to pay any more than you have to for quality foods and nutritional supplements. If you shop at my iHerb store, you know that you're getting the widest selection as well as the best prices!

Why Use Superfood Products?

To sum it up, here are all the great reasons why you'd want to add one or more of these superfood products to your daily routine:

1. Huge Nutritional Content in Tiny Portions. A single serving (as small as a tablespoon) typically gives you the antioxidant and nutritional benefits of three to six servings of common fruits and vegetables!

2. You Get Unique and Powerful Phytonutrients and Antioxidants. Superfoods contain nutrients not found in any other common fruit or vegetable.

3. You Avoid Pesticides. These superfood products are almost exclusively organically-grown or wild-harvested, so you avoid the high levels of pesticides that are found in conventionally-grown fresh fruit and vegetables.

4. Long Shelf-Life. Never run out of the benefits of fresh fruit and vegetables at home or work because you didn't have time to go to the grocery store.

5. You Can Have Them Delivered Right to Your Door. How can you beat that?

Green Superfood Powders

Other Superfood Powders

Antioxidant Juices

Superfood Snacks and Energy Bars

Back to Antioxidants Home Page from Superfood Products

Do you have a
favorite superfood supplement?

If you do, would you like to share it with my readers? Tell us about a specific product you like and why you like it. Share a favorite recipe that you use with your superfood supplement. Your recommendation will appear on its own page right here on this website!