Superfood Science on the Brain

Ever since that funky, little Amazonian wonderberry, açaí, burst onto the scene several years ago, the concept of “supers” has continued to carve itself an ever-widening categorical niche. Dr. Steven Pratt’s groundbreaking book, “SuperFoods Rx,” first pointed the direction toward this marketing-cum-scientific phenomenon way back in 2003, and very likely introduced the coined term “superfoods” to the public at large. In the interim, we have looked far and wide for nutritionally dense foods to add to our diet that might hold a collective key to aging healthfully and gracefully, from domestic and exotic fruits to ancient grains, greens, nuts, fish, legumes, etc.—and expect to see edible microalgae added to this list soon (I saw a few suppliers carrying it at this year’s SupplySide West show, and it’s even on the shelves at CostCo now—not in pill form, but as a food ingredient).

But it’s easy to get hung up on the power of supers. As noted in a still-recent blog post by vegetarian expert Steve Billig over on the WellWise Community (dig into your online communities—it’s the future of discussion and debate in our business, with its ever-changing fluid flux of ongoing Internet discourse vs. static printed pages—including the SupplySide Community we have rolling), any food—super or not—needs to be part of a well-rounded, highly diverse diet, something we should take into consideration when designing nutritional products (get diverse, and targeted within the selected product demographic).

And it’s easy for unscrupulous folks to capitalize on the momentum. During the recent SupplySide West conference, we held a superfruits workshop that covered everything from emerging contenders for the category to the science behind the supers and market activity and potential. This is a perennial hot topic for those of us immersed in the nutritional ingredient side of things, as we never know what will be the next açaí. But as Mark Blumenthal, founder and executive director of the American Botanical Council, noted, way too many people still have a primary, knee-jerk reaction connecting açaí to weight loss—a connection that has absolutely no scientific merit. We need to put science first, and açaí has much going for it in terms of antioxidant ability, but it—along with any other single food—is not the key to shedding unsightly pounds or curing global obesity.

And actual science on the supers continues to emerge. One highly beneficial aspect of many supers was highlighted in the workshop by Amanda Carey, Ph.D., a post-doctoral affiliate in USDA’s Neuroscience Laboratory in the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University: supers as “brain food.” She specifically has been working with strawberries and blueberries and their ability to improve brain “plasticity” and “housekeeping,” the latter referring to the ability to break down and reuse accumulated cellular “debris” in the brain. They can also help improve synaptic response. Oxidative stress takes a serious toll on us as we age, and the supers can help matters by keeping us sharp, reducing inflammation and cutting the chances of age-related disease.