Super Foods For Super You
Super Foods For Super You is a new easy-reference guide by nutritionist and avid gardener Amber Jessica Mackenzie.
The book lists entries for a wide variety of ‘super foods’ or ‘functional foods’, as well as offering plain-English explanations of terms like ‘antioxidant’ and ‘phytochemical’. Each entry in the book, from Acai to Yoghurt, includes basic information on the food, a list of its properties and recommended uses, and tips on gardening. Allergy warnings and suitability for children are also listed.
Among the buzzword super foods – salmon, blueberries, green tea, goji, acai, flaxseed oil, seaweed, dark chocolate and coconut water – are a few familiar dinner-table faces: tomatoes, bananas, spinach, eggs, apples, capsicum, brown rice, broccoli and cabbage. A few more unusual items make it in as well: Kakadu plum, Barbados cherry, royal jelly and amarinth cereal.
“Eating a handful of goji berries is not going to instantly make you a healthy person, because it is essential that we eat a wide range of coloured foods from a variety of food groups every day,” says MacKenzie in her introduction. But superfoods, with their “greater cross-section of nutrient essentials”, may be helpful in improving diet and overall health.
Mackenzie provides references for the health benefits of her super foods at the back of the book, and while these are mostly for articles in daily media rather than peer-reviewed journals, it shows a heartening readiness for the reader not to take only her word for the powers of the foods listed in this book.
Super Foods For Super You is available from all good bookstores at a RRP of $9.95
