What is a Superfood Really?

It might seem like a silly question really. But what is a super food?

When I think of a superfood, I immediately think of blueberries. I think of things that are dark green or deep purple, foods that go beyond basic nutrition, foods that house more nutrients per cubic millimeter than others. I always thought they are usually fruits and vegetables, but more often fruits: blueberries, acai berries, spirulina and chlorella. Many of the superfoods are things I already eat, but some are not.

So imagine my surprise the other day when I saw this as I rode home on my uptown A train.

Do you see that little sentence at the very bottom? It says “With over 30 vitamins and nutrients, peanuts are a Superfood”. Well I am no hater of peanuts. In fact I rather like their taste. But ever since I read about aflatoxins and lectins, I haven’t reached for them. But the truth is, I never ate them that often. The aflatoxin thing just sealed the deal. I much prefer almonds and cashews. But something about this statement pissed me. It seemed so obviously marketing.

Now I don’t doubt that peanuts contain 30 vitamins and nutrients, but I have also read enough that I might hesitate to compare peanuts to blueberries if I was the one writing the article. So I asked myself, what is a superfood? My conclusions were kind of interesting.

When I first Googled ‘superfoods’ and what is a superfood’ I turned up hundreds of thousands of articles trying to sell me chlorella caps and Odwalla juice. The individual cites threw the term around loosely, mostly in high praise of whatever they were selling. Then I Googled ‘list of superfoods’ and I got a couple of interesting returns.

First I got Web MD articles and the like giving me 10 or 12 superfoods that my diet can’t be without. Stuff like Salmon and Spinach and there they were blueberries. But a better cite came next. Off a site called http://www.superfoodinfos.net/ I got a long article listing out foods and explaining it. The article listed out many many different foods from acai berries to carrots and cantaloupe to garlic and green beans to prunes and pumpkins all the way to walnuts and wild salmon. Virtually every fruit and vegetable was on this list. This was the longest list I found. But I didn’t look past the first Google page, because I specifically wanted cites with a lot of hits. I wanted to know what the conventional wisdom was.

There is only one animal food on the list, wild salmon. The rest are fruits and veggies and nuts and spices. There are only two nuts on the list—cashews and walnuts. In fact while there was great variance among the different lists I read (some included almonds), NONE of the sites mentioned peanuts as being a superfood.

But what about an official list of superfoods? Well, there isn’t one. I checked. ‘Superfood’ is not a term that is regulated by the USDA. Coca-Cola could put the term on the outside of their sodas with no legal repercussion (If I am wrong, can someone school me in the comments section—thanks!). Though possibly they might call attention to the word and get sued for some kind of civil advertising something.

But that is what makes this peanut case all the more tricky. If Coca-Cola proclaimed their sodas as superfoods, you would probably think less of them, because you didn’t inherently believe it. That would be the kind of marketing that pissed you off enough to tweet about it, or even sue. And that is bad publicity. But when peanuts advertise themselves as superfood, you might think it sounds kind of right. In fact, maybe it takes you off guard a little because you have never heard of peanuts being a superfood. Then you start to think maybe they just got ‘superfood’ status, so that’s why you haven’t heard of it. And peanuts are really high in protein and they are (sometimes) unprocessed, maybe the next time you are at the store you’ll pick some up! After all they are a superfood.

But this advertisement is just playing into the pre-conceived notions that you already have. The advertisement, in my opinion, is aimed at people who already have a favorable opinion of peanuts. The advertisement attempts to make those people go out and take action by buying peanuts. On one hand, claiming that they are a superfood is a bold move when you realize that the word means virtually nothing. And on another hand this is a very subtle ad campaign that plays on some of the hot verbiage in the marketing place. And it is smart for an industry lobby to reach out to those folks who like their products, but haven’t recently bought.

This post today is not out to get you stop buying peanuts. Hell, peanuts are in general pretty good for you. Even my pediatrician laughed at the notion of aflatoxins when I discussed it with her. “Oh yeah, they’ve known about them for years”, she said. Go and buy peanuts if you love them.

The point of this post is to encourage you to become more of a skeptic. This is a good one, a really good one. Never think that you are too smart to withstand marketing. Modern marketing is tricky, and sophisticated. The marketers might not be able to convince you about everything, but I guarantee they have gotten you on at least one thing in the last week. And you didn’t even realize it. So keep reading, keep googling, stay aware and make up your own damn mind.

This post is part of Food Renegade's Fight Back Fridays and Real Food Whole Health's Fresh Bites Friday

Peanuts and Lectins and Aflatoxins, Oh My!

When I started this blog one of the first things I did was to replace my vegetable oil (read-soybean oil) with peanut oil. Peanut oil has been around a long time, plus peanuts are an oily food, it only makes sense that one could easily make oil. Easy to make equals less processing.

Then I noticed that Sally Fallon recommends eating peanut oil only occasionally. Okay, that was fine, I moved on to beef tallow and coconut oil and ate fewer thing requiring vegetable oils in general. But I continued to eat peanuts which, as you probably already know, are not nuts at all but legumes or beans. I never gave this truth much thought. I eat beans and consider them good for me. So who the heck cares that peanuts are legumes? Then I met the paleo people. They of course don't eat beans and legumes because of their high lectin content. Lectins are 'antinutrients' that inhibit your ability to absorb the protein stores that are found in beans and legumes. They are called antinutrients because they limit your ability to digest the actual nutrients that are available in your foods, so I get it. I mean if you are unable to digest, absorb and utilise a food, who gives a flying fork if it is high in protein?? Traditional bean preparation has been to soak dried beans, change the water out every couple of hours and then discard the soaking liquid. I have done this for years because I wanted to reduce the cooking time of my dried beans. But it turns out that soaking also reduces the lectin content of the beans. Don't you just love that much of proper food preparation is instinctual? Fermentation also is a good way to pre-digest some of those lectin beasties. So always soak your dried beans for a minimum of 24 hours and better if you soak for 2-3 days until they start to sprout. Always throw out the soaking liquid. And if you use canned beans, always throw out the liquid they are canned in and wash them thoroughly before adding them to your dish. This doesn't get rid of ALL the lectins, but it's good enough for me. The paleo people feel strongly that beans and legumes would not have been part of paleolithic man's diet because one needs to cook them. Therefore beans and legumes are not paleo. And lastly, soaking beans much longer or until they sprout allows the bean to "come life" and much of the starch converts to proteins as the bean prepares to grow into a plant. Remember that sprout craze 20 years ago? There you go, that's the science behind it. You can sprout any beans or seeds or non-irradiated nuts, including wheat. I have started only buying sprouted breads and all the boys (both the little ones and the big one) love it. They don't even realize that I changed it up on them.

But back to peanuts. Now you can start to see why it is significant to identify peanuts as legumes rather than a nut. Biologically they are vastly different than nuts. They aren't even brothers or cousins.

Then a couple weeks ago I was discussing all this with a like minded colleague. I respect this friend's opinion because she is dairy, gluten and refined sugar free. (My hero!) She said that she no longer eats peanuts because of the carcinogens. Wha-wha-what???? Carcinogens? Seriously? She sent me some sources and information and what I read really shocked me!

It turns out that there is this nasty little mold, called Aspergillus flavus, that gets into peanuts and other stored seed kernels (like corn or wheat) and creates these toxins which are carcinogens, which is called aflatoxins. (And yes, I am well aware that that last website was for a veterinarian, like animals, but the info is still pretty good.) Not all peanuts have them but those that have been stored have a higher likelihood of being infested. It is apparently pretty common. One website I found said that in a recent study all major brands of peanut butter contained some level of aflatoxins above the believed safe level. The health food store peanut butter which is 'grind your own' contained the highest levels of aflatoxins, undoubtedly because they were stored longer in open containers that allowed air flow. Yikes! Many folks feel like roasting kills the mold, but others are not as sure. If a commercial peanut butter still contains some traces, likely a commercial high heat roasting and refining process is not killing the mold in entirety.

Fortunately Dr Weil at his website tells us not to lose our heads. Aflatoxins create the risk for liver cancer. And since adolescents generally consume high amounts of peanut butter you'd think that there would be a ton of kids out there with liver cancer. But there haven't been any liver cancer epidemics reported in the under 12 set. Nevertheless, perhaps we don't know all there is to know about peanuts and their oil. Not to mention that many schools and public places have forbidden the use of peanut products due to severe allergy concerns. So, I think we will probably just steer clear. My Things like almond butter (I prefer it) so why don't I just use that? Almonds are not at risk for aflatoxin contamination. I have also heard that sunflower seed butter is approved because it is not a peanut nor a tree nut, another common allergy. I have never eaten 'sun butter'.

Peanuts likely do not present a grave health problem for you. But they are not as safe as some other foods. I liken it to mercury levels in tuna. You know you shouldn't be eating 3 pounds of tuna every week, so use the same caution with peanuts. But the paleo people get a plus one for using their instincts about food to guide them to healthy diet.