A Winning Food Listing

People love lists. They love to be able to get the facts in a nice progression, from worst to first or from best to all the rest.

Whether it’s the top rated books on Amazon, the New York Times Bestseller list, David Letterman’s Top 10 List, or Fortune 500’s list of the country’s largest corporations or highest paid CEOs, we gobble up lists.

I enjoy a good list now and then myself, particularly when the list jibes with the advice I’ve given over the years, like what are the best foods to eat.

And speaking of what are the best foods to eat, the New York State Dietetic Association has compiled a top five listing of what they consider the world’s most “functional” foods, foods that are not only good for you nutritionally, but provide other benefits in the health realm as well. Here they are, from worst (relatively speaking) to first:

5. Low-fat Yogurt

I’m somewhat conflicted here. While truly healthy yogurt does indeed improve digestion due to the active cultures within it, many low-fat yogurts have lots of preservatives and sweeteners in them, like aspartame. You even have to watch out for the “all-natural” yogurts, as they contain lots of added sugars. Nevertheless, when not overly tampered with, yogurt is about as natural as it gets in terms of how it’s made (yogurt is essentially fermented milk). So as long as the yogurt is organic, this is a good pick for a top five food because of the benefits it provides to the body’s digestive system.

4. Milk

Just out of the top three is milk, as it provides the body with the calcium and vitamin D the body needs for bone development and healthy heart function. I’ve got no problem with this, so long as the milk is raw and organic. These may be hard to come by at your local grocer’s dairy aisle, but trust me, you’re best off avoiding pasteurized cow’s milk. Sure, pasteurized milk may contain vitamin D and calcium, but the raw kind has more of these vital nutrients, and don’t have the negative effects associated with the pasteurized version.

3. Blueberries

The superfood of all superfoods! The NYSDA gave blueberries the bronze for their richness in antioxidants that protect the body from cells being damaged by free radicals. Blueberries also protect the body from colon cancer, as noted in a past article of mine on these blue beauties.

2. Oats

What were once considered to be found predominantly inside the cardboard boxes of Cheerios, wild oats are spreading their wings and flying in the health world. I just recently wrote an article on the benefits of wild oats in helping with smoking cessation, but the NYSDA gives oats runner-up honors for high fiber content and their ability to lower cholesterol and aiding in digestion, among other things.

1. Salmon

What more is there to say about a gold-standard like salmon? It’s made from some of the best fats on the earth – omega-3s – that contain a host of benefits to the body, like aiding in the prevention of coronary artery disease, as the NYSDA make note of. What’s more, it tastes great; there’s no need to add anything to salmon to make it taste better than it does plain.

You won’t find a sole nutritional health advocate who’ll tell you to avoid salmon. They may, however, tell you to avoid farm-raised salmon. Not that it will kill you or that it’s really bad for you, but because the wild kind is so much better for you than farm-raised.

The list is debatable, and I can certainly think of others that rival each of these foods, but it’s a list for you to consider when you make up your own list for what to grab at the grocery store.

Source
nutraingredients-usa.com