Originally published October 18 2005
Superfoods guru shares his grocery list
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Newsweek follows Dr. Steven Pratt, superfoods guru and bestselling author, to the supermarket and shares his shopping list of superfruits and healthy spices.
To say that Dr. Steven Pratt is passionate about food would be an understatement.
To Pratt, coauthor of the 2004 best seller "SuperFoods Rx," food choices aren't about anything as trivial as personal tastes.
Choose well, and you may ward off cancer and heart disease.
Chow down on "processed crud," as he calls it, and you might as well reserve a handicapped space at the hospital.
With summer long gone, it may not seem a good time to be pitching fruit.
But three of Pratt's new power foods are fruits that are currently in season---pomegranates, kiwis and apples.
Even humble apples have been looking stellar in studies showing that they reduce the risk of asthma and may help prevent lung cancer.
"One study found that 10 grams of spice [roughly 2 tablespoons] contained as many health-promoting antioxidants as 10 servings of fruits and vegetables," he says.
Virtually all spices are beneficial---and they're essentially free of calories.
But Pratt singles out one study on cinnamon.
(Pratt finds that Vegit All-Purpose Seasoning, available in most natural-food stores, does the trick.)
Long a staple of the heart-healthy Mediterranean diet, olive oil is looking even better now that scientists have shown that the extra-virgin variety has anti-inflammatory properties.
Low-grade inflammation has been implicated in everything from heart disease and colon cancer to Alzheimer's.
Pratt's advice: look for the words "first cold pressed," which indicate that little heat was used.
Perhaps the best news is that dark chocolate (but not milk chocolate) is now a superfood.
"It's not just the antioxidants that make it healthy," says Pratt.
Dark chocolate contains substances similar to the heart-healthy compounds in green tea.
They help boost the production of nitric oxide in blood vessels, lowering blood pressure and improving blood flow.
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