Introducing 'Super Broccoli'

Lately I feel like I've been living in the Hall of Justice, the headquarters of the Super Friends, the animated series that brought DC Comics' Justice League to television—you know, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. That's because my mind has been all aflutter with superfoods of late as I pull together contributions for this month's Food and Beverage discussion on the subject in the SupplySide Community, a new website that strives to "discuss, debate and define the issues affecting your business." Check it out. This is the future of interactive Web-based discussion.

But back to the Super Friends. So I recently ran across a piece on "super broccoli," a new strain bred to contain two to three times the typical level of glucoraphanin, a key nutrient in the vegetable that has been shown to help prevent heart disease (Whole Foods has a nice entry on broccoli, complete with health details and research references). And although the name (and concept) might conjure images of lab-coated genetic gene splicing and modification, the British scientists responsible for the strain used good-old cross-breeding to create it. Expect to see it at a store near you soon. It's rolling out nationally.