Superfoods

Last night Alex and I attended a lecture at OHSU, a part of the Complimentary and Alternative Medicine lecture series. The topic was "Superfoods: 14 Foods that will Change Your Life" and it was given by Steve Pratt, MD, an ophthamologist who wrote a book with a similar title and who (as he often reminded us) has been a guest consultant on Oprah.

Now, I'm not usually in the habit of plugging books (especially new york times best seller books that don't need my help), but I can feel comfortable in the act of putting in a plug for nutritional education. Dr. Pratt's investigations into how nutrition can help prevent eye diseases like macular degeneration progressed over the years to how certain foods can prevent other chronic diseases. He compiled a list of foods that, because of their high concentrations of various beneficial compounds (anti-oxidants, carotenoids, lycopene, omega-3-fatty acids, etc), their scientifically demonstrated beneficial health effects, and their use by various human cultures for countless millennia, he thinks that everyone should try to eat.

It was a very good talk (I will forgive the good Dr. Pratt for his deplorable enunciation). I was even thinking of buying the book, but I settled for just writing down a list of the "superfoods."

Dear reader, so that you may lead long and healthy lives without spending money on fad books, here is the list:

1. Beans
2. Blueberries
3. Broccoli
4. Oats
5. Oranges
6. Pumpkin
7. Wild Salmon (specifically wild Alaskan sockeye. Never farmed)
8. Soy
9. Spinach
10. Tea (especially green tea)
11. Tomatoes
12. Turkey
13. Walnuts
14. Yogurt
15. Dark Chocolate (the audience literally cheered when he got to this slide)
16. Apples
17. Avocado
18. Spices - cinnamon, black pepper, tumeric (he takes a 1g tumeric pill every day)
19. Extra virgin olive oil
20. Garlic
21. Onions
22. Honey (ideally dark, buckwheat honey)
23. Kiwi
24. Pomegranate
25. Dried fruits (especially tart cherries)

There were lots of things that I liked about the talk, and this list. For one, it confirmed a lot of my notions on good foods to eat (I was able to feel very self-congratulatory about eating oat bran every day and about my recent dinner of chickpeas and swiss chard). It reminded me how important nutrition is in human health, and how incredibly little we learn about it in medical school. It was also nice to get this information from a practicing MD who had put years of study into peer-reviewed scientific literature, and it was nice that these decades of research have confirmed what most people know deep down (and what naturopaths have been telling everyone for years): that eating whole fruits, vegetables, and grains is very very good for you.

It was also nice to get the following piece of data: Blueberries have been shown to reduce the neurological effects of the radiation from space travel. I repeat, space travel.

With that in mind, Alex and I biked home and made a delicious desert of yogurt, oats, toasted walnuts, honey, and, of course, blueberries. You never know when you might be forced to board a rocket ship and travel through the endless infinity of space, incurring all sorts of neurological damage. I just want to be prepared.