Why You Should Eat Superfoods

By Jim Alby

What is the motivation to eat foods identified as superfoods?

The motivations for including superfoods in your diet are manifestations of the realization you need to eat food for the health of your body not for convenience nor from the habits you have developed over a lifetime. The first step needs to be a desire to understand how the food you normally eat affects your health. A health crisis is often the motivation to examine the dietary choices you make every day.

The media has stories everyday regarding the obesity epidemic in this country. Development of diabetes, heart disease and cancer will shock most people into rethinking what they are eating everyday. Obviously the diets of many people in this country are not based on sound nutrition, are not balanced, are not nutrient rich, are chosen to promote health. The most advertised food choices are based on convenience; taste and promoting highly processed factory foods full of fat and sugar.

The endless television ads promoting fast food, ready to eat meals, salty snacks, processed foods, high sugar cereals, processed meat products, high carbohydrate foods and sugar based beverages influence millions of people to eat an unhealthy diet. Ads promote foods based on convenience. Beautiful enhanced images of delicious appearing low nutrient high calorie food sell people on a high calorie low nutrient diet.

I am often amazed at what I see in people's carts at the supermarket. Boxes of frozen pizzas, processed meats, prepared meals, sugar soda, salty snacks, and sugar cereals fill the cart. There are no fresh vegetables of any kind in the cart.

Unless people make decisions to educate themselves on the food value of the items in their cart they are on a collision course to obesity and bad health. Children who are fed this type of food and eat fast food weekly are on the road to becoming obesity statistics. As these children grow they continue to eat the same type of food and carry these dietary habits to adulthood.

If there is no motivation to make food choices based on the proper nutritional needs of the body a person will be unlikely to be interested in superfoods.

One the main benefits of basing your diet on foods from the list of superfoods is weight loss. Superfoods are defined as foods high in nutrients and vitamins and low in calories. To lose weight you need to eat a balanced nutrient rich, low caloric diet. So choosing foods with the highest nutrient value per calorie is the fastest way to getting to the target weight.

Introducing superfoods into your diet will allow you to replace the high calorie low nutrient foods gradually, making the process simple and easy to accomplish. Conventional wisdom says it takes 28 days of repeating an action for it to become a habit. To train your self to adopt new eating habits is going to take some time and determination. If you have been eating the same way for years or decades they are habits not easy to break. Making a gradual switch with realistic planning and setting attainable goals will more likely result in success.

A gradual cutting back of sugar is the important first step. Starting a food log and writing down what and how much you eat every meal will help you understand where important changes can be made in your diet.

Consulting with your doctor is a good step. This may be the reason why many peoples make the decision to take control of their diet and food choices. If you have been told you are diabetic or are developing type II diabetes, the doctor has hopefully talked to you about losing weight and watching what you eat.

Unfortunately, many doctors rely more on a pharmaceutical approach and less on stressing the importance of changing the diet. Continuing with the same diet that brought you to be diabetic and adding drugs to treat the disease without a fundamental change in your diet is the wrong approach in my opinion. They are many doctors, nutritionists, and former type II diabetics who endorse diet as a means to reversing the disease. A diet based on superfoods will promote the development of your immunity cells.

The keys are education, commitment and implementation of a plan to eat a diet based on foods to promote your health and eliminate those low nutrient, high sugar, highly processed foods.

So choose superfoods to be the base of your everyday diet. The list below are basic superfoods to plan your menus around. If you want to strengthen you immune system and increase your resistance to many diseases you need to base your diet on the following list of superfoods.

• Leafy green vegetables of all kinds
• Legumes of all kinds
• Sweet potatoes
• Cruciform vegetables
• Berries of all kinds
• Nuts and Seeds
• Coconuts

Jim Alby is a author and researcher on how nutrition affects our mind, body, and soul. You can check his latest website at listsuperfoods where he gives explanations of the value of superfoods, a list of superfoods, recipes for superfoods and a anti cancer superfoods based diet.
http://www.listsuperfoods.org/anti_cancer_superfood_diet.html#.T4XFmPn2vmE

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