Are Superfoods Just Super Marketing?

The health world is filled with buzzwords like "antioxidants," "free radicals," and "superfoods," but what's actually happening in our bodies when we encounter these substances? This episode cuts through the marketing hype to deliver straightforward science you can actually use.

Free radicals function like sparks within your body - necessary in small amounts but potentially damaging when uncontrolled. These unstable molecules form naturally during metabolism and increase with exposure to processed foods, environmental toxins, and stress. Left unchecked, they create oxidative stress that accelerates aging and disease. Antioxidants work as your body's defense system, neutralizing these harmful molecules before they cause cellular damage.

While expensive "superfoods" and supplements get most of the attention, research consistently shows that everyday whole foods provide equal or superior antioxidant protection. Colorful fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices, and even modest amounts of coffee and dark chocolate deliver powerful antioxidant benefits without the marketing markup. The vibrant colors in these foods aren't just visually appealing - they're nature's way of signaling their protective properties.

Ready to boost your antioxidant intake? Start by aiming for 5-9 palm-sized servings of fruits and vegetables daily, emphasizing variety in colors. This week, challenge yourself to add two new colorful foods to your plate. Remember that small, consistent changes create meaningful health improvements over time. Your body doesn't need exotic supplements or fancy powders - it needs the rainbow of nutrients found in whole, minimally processed foods.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Free Radicals: The Body's Sparks
• 2:22 Antioxidants: Nature's Fire Extinguishers
• 4:32 Debunking Superfood Myths
• 6:52 Eat the Rainbow Strategy
• 9:32 Simple Changes for Big Results
• 13:02 Weekly Challenge and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

you've probably heard about antioxidants, superfoods and free radicals, but what do these words really mean? Today we're cutting through the noise and talking about what the science actually says. Thanks for joining us on another episode of living a full life. Free radicals, antioxidants words you may have heard back in high school, but what do they really mean? What do they do? And really the simple analogy of all this is that think of free radicals like little sparks inside of your body. In small amounts they're normal, but if the sparks fly everywhere without being controlled, they cause a lot of damage, and I like that analogy of what free radicals are. They're unstable molecules formed when your body breaks down.

Speaker 1: 1:09

Food, exercise or is exposed to toxins like smoke, pollution, processed foods and even stress. Too many equals oxidative stress in the body, which contributes to aging, inflammation and disease like heart disease, cancer, alzheimer's, and the list goes on. So free radicals are no bueno because they're sparks and these sparks can cause a lot of damage if they get out of control. We increase these sparks in the body by eating processed foods. That's the number one source of it. Number two is stress. We put ourselves through a lot of stress mentally and physically by sitting in similar positions every day in front of computers and not exercising, or exercising aggressively, but really through the processed foods, the snacks that we choose, the carbohydrates that we choose, the packaged foods that we choose. That's where free radicals love to develop.

Speaker 1: 2:05

So the way to fight them is with what we call antioxidants. Antioxidants go in and they're like fire extinguishers they neutralize the free radicals before they can cause major damage. The body already makes some antioxidants naturally, like glutathione, superoxide, demutase and some other ones that your body just produces. And food provides extra help Vitamins like vitamin C E, minerals like selenium, zinc, and plant compounds like polyphenols and flavonoids. We get these through whole foods. We can supplement them as well, but the key point is that balance is everything. You need some free radicals for immune defense, but antioxidants keep them in check. So everything plays a role, and medicine and influencers and Instagram have made this depiction that there's cheats and biohacks and simple ways to cut corners when really there isn't, and that there's good things and bad things when really the human body doesn't work that way. Everything that happens in the human body was done by design, even free radicals. They play a little role in there. Those sparks can help put ammunition into your immune system to help fight off disease, bacteria, viruses and pathologies. So antioxidants play a small role. These sparks can be used as ammunition by your immune system to help fight things off, but once you have too many of them they can cause fires.

Speaker 1: 3:42

So the best antioxidants and if you grew up with me, you know 80s, 90s, 2000s and the superfood eras and all that stuff let's break down those myths too. But antioxidants come through our whole foods and let's talk about them. Fruits mainly the small fruits acai, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, pomegranates, citrus they all have amazing antioxidant properties to them, especially the fresher that they are. So fresh fruits play a huge role in that. That's why eating them off the vine is the best. Eating them and not juicing them is where I'm trying to get to on this.

Speaker 1: 4:18

Vegetables leafy green broccoli, bell peppers, carrots those bright vegetables are bright because of their antioxidants. There's other things too, like green tea, coffee Coffee itself, in moderation, has an antioxidant properties to it. Dark chocolate, the 70% plus nuts, seeds, beans, herbs and spices like turmeric, cinnamon, oregano these things all have antioxidant properties in them. Many parts of the world use herbs and spices in a lot of their cooking and have great health benefits from them. The Mediterranean is known for their turmeric, cinnamon, oregano, thyme, and the Middle East is. You know their spices that they use there chili peppers and pepper flakes and all these other things that they use in the curry and some other herbs that they use in there as well. But turmeric is used around the world and these things are antioxidant in themselves.

Speaker 1: 5:20

Some superfoods that you may have heard of in the past that got a lot of hype and maybe some overhype due to marketing things like goji berries, acai bowls, exotic powders. They can be good, but they're not miracle cures. Acai was this huge thing for a long time and goji and gooseberries and all these things that were, and they came in God because of the fads, because they were really just marketing tools to just push them a lot faster but really didn't have any more benefit than blueberries. So science shows that every day, affordable foods like apples, beans, kale, blueberries can be just as powerful or more powerful than expensive imports. So keep it simple you don't need superfood powders. Whole foods do the job just as well.

Speaker 1: 6:07

There is no such thing as superfoods, just healthy foods and bad foods, and having a clean, fine line between the two and eating a lot of the good stuff and very little of the bad stuff. That's how we keep inflammation at check, free radicals at check, cancer causing agents at check. All of these things is by having a clean, defined line and strict rules in your home of what's in the pantry, what's in the fridge, and keeping it very simple. So eat the rainbow when it comes to your fruits and vegetables. Those colors are there for a reason. They're there to entice you to eat them, because it's like, hey, man, I'm good for you, eat this. I'm bright orange, I'm a carrot, eat me. I'm a bright yellow bell pepper, eat me. It's because they're there for appeal and it's for all animals to eat them. That's the whole point of it. Eat the rainbow. Different colors equal different antioxidants. It's what gives them their color and their minerals.

Speaker 1: 7:07

Don't rely on supplements. Always go food first and then supplement. Supplements can help if we're deficient in certain things, but high dose pills don't outperform real food. The literature supports this across the board. Supplementing vitamins into your system, compared to eating them, have drastic different outcomes. People who eat them from whole foods have very different outcomes than supplementation. So that's why your medical doctor may not be too excited about vitamins all the time when you go in and talk to them and they're like, eh, you don't really need it. It's not because they don't believe in them, it's because they read the literature, and it's not very overwhelming to tell your patients to take more vitamin E and K and A rather than eat a good diet. So they don't talk about the good diet either, though. So I do, because eating healthy foods is the foundation to all success when it comes to health.

Speaker 1: 8:07

Aim for at least five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables daily. A serving is the palm of your hand. Eat five to nine of these each day. You'd be surprised. It's easy to get those five in Nine. You're doing great, and that's what you want to do every single day, to make sure you're getting enough variety and probably covering your bases for antioxidants, anti-inflammatory foods, vitamins and minerals. It's just a great rule Cook with herbs and spices.

Speaker 1: 8:34

Add that. They taste great. Add it to your foods. Add it to your meats. Add it to your veggies. It just gives you that extra taste. Add it to your kids' food oregano, thyme, garlic, ginger. See what they like, see what they don't like it into their food. Cook with it. It will help everyone. Small, small amounts of this stuff pack huge antioxidant power, so think about that. Free radicals are normal. Just remember that antioxidants keep them in check. Balance is the goal when it comes to all of this stuff.

Speaker 1: 9:07

Don't chase the superfoods. Don't do the marketing ploys the avocado fad, the acai bowl fad. You go to some of these stores I'm not going to name them like Green and Berry, and you buy a bowl and it's got like 1400 calories packed with sugar and you're like how can this healthy bowl have so much sugar in it? Well, it's because they add sugar to all of this stuff. It's not just whole foods Make it super tasty. That's why we want to go and eat it. It's because of the sugar. So you got to make your own stuff at home when it comes to healthy foods. Build an antioxidant rich lifestyle by eating the variety of fruits and vegetables. That's how you do it. You don't have to go out and buy any books. You don't have to join any programs. You don't have to buy any super foods or supplements or any type of MLM stuff that's out there promising you great antioxidant outcomes If you don't change your diet and you keep adding inflammation to the diet and keep adding kerosene to the sparks and to the fire inside of our body.

Speaker 1: 10:11

No supplement out there is going to outweigh that, the heaviness from that. So we have to just supplement our diet and eat well to reduce the sparks, to reduce the fire, to reduce the heat in the body, the inflammation. Then when you start to add supplements they can really boost certain things like energy, sleep, feeling, decrease in pain, decrease in swelling. It can really help. That's who we see it. But the people who don't get much it's typically the 50-year-old dude that you give them hey, take this vitamin. They're like I took the vitamin, I don't feel any different. Well, it's because you can't drink a case of beer. I took the vitamin, I don't feel any different. Well, it's because you can't drink a case of beer. Dip, dip, dip, dip. You can't do that. You can't stay in a constant thing of inflammation and then go out and take some vitamin E and be like, well, it didn't really help. Well, no, it didn't help.

Speaker 1: 10:59

You got to change this first. You got to change the foundation. First, aim for five to nine fruits and vegetables cooked with spices we talked about that. Build an antioxidant-rich lifestyle with variety. And then this week my goal for you, or my challenge for you is to try to add two more colors to your plate. It can be your lunch plate, your dinner plate, maybe some blueberries at breakfast or roasted peppers at dinner. Small changes add up to big health over time and it's just by making those small changes.

Speaker 1: 11:34

The best tips when we talk about elimination diets or things where we're trying to help people get through some health conditions, is eliminate and then just add good stuff and start to build from the good stuff. An elimination protocol is more to see what we're allergic to or what we react to. So we clean the slate. We eat clean base meals for like seven days, then we start to add foods back to our diet and see where we react. You don't need to do that at that type of a scale. What you can do is be like yeah, I know I always default to that bad thing that I eat in the morning the yogurt. It's not whole fat Greek yogurt, it's the sweet stuff with the blueberries already in it. I know it's a lot of sugar. I'm going to get rid of that. I'm not going to buy that anymore. I'm going to switch to whole fat Greek yogurt and I'll add my blueberries in there. You see what we're saying so we make a swap out, or maybe it's just a food that has to go and something that has to come in.

Speaker 1: 12:28

You're like, yes, we're just bad with veggies. We just don't cook veggies. The kids don't eat them. Well, you're going to just have to start cooking with them, pick the ones that they like and run with them, whether it's broccoli or mushrooms or whatever it is. Run with that, eat more of them and then start to sneak in the other colors as well. Life you do the better. Hopefully, that was some good tips for you. Short podcast this week, but packs a major punch with antioxidants. Remember, the free radicals are there. They're not good, but they do play a role in the body. It's your job to eat a variety from the colors of the rainbow in your fruits and vegetables to make sure that you offset free radicals with things that are called antioxidants. Stay well, stay healthy and take care.