Are you making superfood smoothies? Spoiler: They may be the reason you’re gaining weight.

What started as a general, well-intentioned suggestion to eat a diet full of fruits and vegetables has now spiraled out of control. Instead of appreciating the produce that is so readily available at our local farmers markets and grocery stores, we’ve come to put exotic, hard-to-find, expensive powders, elixirs, and cold-pressed oils on a pedestal. Sure, they may boast all the nutritional benefits they’re being praised for, but are they actually doing your body any good?

Before I go into why you should shed the promises of the superfoods, let me define what I mean by “superfood” here.

The term is thrown around a lot and can mean many different things to a variety of people. Originally, a superfood was pegged as any food with an unusually dense nutrient content. Nowadays, it is used to describe something as mundane as an apple, simply because the apple is superbly good for you. For the purposes of this article, however, when I use the term “superfood”, I’m referring to all the health foods entering our market that usually come in powder, dried fruit and nut, or oil form. These superfoods are out of the ordinary for the American agricultural scene but have a growing fanfare for all their health promises.

This is not to say that superfoods don’t have their place – they do — but we shouldn’t blindly accept superfoods as the be-all-end-all ingredients to make us our healthiest selves. For some, superfoods open room for more creativity in the vegan kitchen, especially for superfood smoothies! For others, they are a necessary part of a strict dietary protocol that attends to a specific health woe or concern. And, of course, they can be super delicious! The key is in understanding that superfoods are superfluous, not foundational, and they aren’t nearly as super as you think.

Now that we are on the same page, let’s talk about why such superfoods are making you thicker around the middle and, in some cases, compromising your health.

Sugar is Sugar, Even Superfood Sugar

There’s no way to avoid it: sugar is sugar, no matter what form it’s in. If you eat too much sugar, it’ll strain your liver, lead to the accumulation of toxins, increase the risk for fungal infections, decrease brain function, and of course, metabolize directly into fat.

Agave, coconut palm sugar, lucuma, brown rice sugar, and variations of unprocessed regular white sugar, such as Demera and turbinado sugar, are still raising your blood sugar levels, even if not to the extent of white sugar. To get these superfood sugars’ nutritional benefits, you’d have to consume a whole lot more than reasonable. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ve mastered sweetness without the potential side effects. Sure, there are better alternatives to white sugar out there, but that does not mean they warrant superfood status. These “superfood” sweeteners may be better for you, but they are just a lesser evil.

Nuts, Dried Fruits and Powders: Super Constipated

Nuts, dried fruits, and superfood powders are dense, concentrated in sugar or fat, and are often hard to digest. Goji berries, acai powder, cacao nibs, camu powder, chia seeds, nut/seed butters, hemp powder, and mulberry berries, among many many others, are prey to manipulative marketing techniques. Superfood companies sell this idea that you’ll be light-years better off with the addition of a cocktail of various dry products in your superfood smoothies. What they don’t say, however, is that a few superfoods later, your smoothie has tripled, if not quadrupled, in fat, calories, and sugar content. Make no mistake: you can gain weight from superfoods. In fact, adding them to your smoothie is the sneaky way many of us are loading in the fat, sugar, and calories. The idea that the smoothie is infused with only raw, vegan, purportedly miracle ingredients masks the reality of what we are consuming.

Meanwhile, many raw and vegan enthusiasts have popularized nut-based dishes as the go-to density provider in place of meat. A spoonful of almond butter or a handful of nuts is one thing, but basing an entire meal around nuts is a digestive disaster waiting to happen. Nuts are extremely fatty and caloric and having too much will simply make you gain weight.

When browsing new healthy recipes, I often see a lot of faux-cheese and dessert recipes based in cashews, and I am dumbfounded by the logic. Sure, it’s vegan, but what about your health? There are other ways to make vegan cheese or desserts without nuts as the core ingredient. When is it ever natural and healthy to have one or two cups full of nuts at any given time?

Healthy Fats: Still Making You Fat, if Not Fatter

I once had a client who complained about gaining weight. For all intents and purposes, her diet was flawless. She was a vegan who had a pantry and refrigerator stocked with chia seeds, kombucha, freekeh, kale, and the likes. She did her research and made sure to keep up with the newest and most promising dietary crazes. Still, she was gaining weight and having digestive issues. I asked her what she used for fat, and she said “coconut oil, of course.” Ah, there it was. The coconut oil craze has gone too far!

My client was mixing coconut oil in her coffee and smoothies, and she was cooking with it. If you look at coconut oil from an objective standpoint, it glimmers! Not only are its medium-chain fatty acids metabolized in a special way so that its inherent saturated fat isn’t as harmful as it normally would be but also it boasts incredible benefits for the skin, brain, and overall energy. But, is this true in practical use? I’ve witnessed conflicting results.

When we are told something is good for us, we tend to overdo it, and I think that is what happened with coconut oil and is happening with other oils, like grapeseed, avocado, and sesame oils. All fat, regardless of type, should be used minimally, and regular butter is actually easier to digest than coconut oil. Coconut oil leaves behind a slight residue in the body, making it a bit harder to digest than regular butter. Even though regular butter comes from milk, it does not contain the hard-to-digest casein protein. It goes down like, for lack of a better word, butter. At the end of the day, fat is fat in the same way sugar is sugar.

Once I advised my client to switch to regular butter, she felt almost instantly better. She naturally used less of it, and her digestion improved. For vegans out there, stick to coconut oil, but please don’t depend on it as its own food group. It is meant to accent a dish, not drown one.

How to Eat (Superfoods Optional)

Superfoods can be part of a balanced diet, but don’t depend on them as lifesavers. They aren’t necessary for a healthy lifestyle, and you can get by just wonderfully on local produce cheaply and readily available at your nearest grocery store.

Related on EcoSalon
Skin Superfoods: 5 of the Best Beautifying Foods
Are Superfoods Actually Bad for Us?
Can We Stop Talking About Superfoods?

Green Smoothie Image from Shutterstock

The post Are All Those Superfood Smoothies Making Us Fat? appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnAçaí berries, goji berries, maca powder… seems like everyone is superfoods obsessed these days.

Superfoods.

If you’ve walked into any health food store, coop or upscale market in the last few years, you know exactly what I am talking about. Hell, you don’t even need to have done any of the above. The marketing of superfoods is so out of control you can find them just about anywhere.

There’s actually no concrete definition of superfoods, and no regulation of the word’s use, which means it can really be slapped on just about anything. In everyday language, superfoods are foods that are especially nutrient-rich. In other words: foods that are good for you. Which is why it’s high time we dropped the word “superfoods.”

There are many foods that make the superfood roundups, but while it’s the more exotic ones that are having their fifteen minutes of fame right now. Açaí berries, goji berries, maca powder; wouldn’t your life be better if you had all of these in a breakfast bowl?

While superfoods certainly offer health benefits, it’s our obsession with the idea of superfoods that’s the root problem.

For one, whatever happened to the lovely blueberry? It packs a lot of antioxidants and touts plenty of health benefits, yet we seem seduced by the thought of goji berries instead. Might I point out that a lot of goji berries come from industrial fields in China? Not so super now, are they?

The idea of superfoods pulls us towards certain ingredients and keeps us from running down the list of conscious consumer questions we should always be asking: Where did these come from? Who grew them? How far did they travel to get to me?

There are plenty of foods growing near you, sometimes even in your back yard, that are perfect options for healthy eating. And yet without a superfoods label they’re not super sexy. Sweet potatoes? Boring. Durian? How exciting!

Would you go to the farmers market and pick up a vegetable and ask the farmer “is this a superfood?” and then not buy it if the farmer said no? No, no you would not. Although while we’re on the subject, probably everything on that farmers table could be considered a superfood. Because it’s real food. Real produce. Stuff that’s good for you. But you know that; it doesn’t need a marketing term to tell you that.

We need to reassess what we’re eating and why. Eating closer to home is good for the economy, the environment and ultimately, ourselves. Eating can give us a connection to place. It’s what grounds us in the rhythm of the seasons and the natural world. That being said, next time you’re on a river cruise on the Amazon, go ahead and stuff your face with those açaí berries.

But aren’t superfoods good for me?

Well, yes, that’s why someone deemed them superfoods in the first place. All these foods, local or exotic, have nutrients that our body needs, but it’s not because you throw goji berries and some chia seeds into your morning smoothie everyday that you’re going to be full of energy and ready to take on the world. The problem with the hype around superfoods is that it leads us to believe that single ingredients are the solution to all of our problems.

Superfoods will not save the world–they won’t even save you. What will? Eating a balanced diet. Not buying processed foods, even when they claim to have superfoods in them. Eating locally whenever possible. Not buying berries from China. Growing your own garden with plenty of leafy greens.

You don’t need superfoods. You just need real food.

Related on EcoSalon

Seasonal Superfoods: Blueberries

The Best Superfoods Are the Ones Growing in Your Garden

Whole Foods Market, Trendy Vegetables and Food Gentrification: Foodie Underground

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: miheco

The post Açaí Berries, Goji Berries and Beyond: Can We Stop Talking About ‘Superfoods’? Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.