My first exposure to superfoods was the spirulina craze in the 1970s. The New Age was coming to the fore and entrepreneurs were selling the stuff at health food stores. After that a lot of other blue-green algae products were on the shelves. Americans love “super” things: Superman, Super Bowl, Super 8, .38 Super, super slo-mo, super-sized, ad nauseum. We also love instant fixes: just gobble up some spirulina and your nutritional and health needs will be met!

More supposedly-super foodstuffs came to our attention over the years like acai berries, arugula, and quinoa, and ones we already knew about like Greek yogurt, pomegranates, and wild-caught salmon attained super-status. We live in a food-and-health obsessed time, you can’t just drink water (or beer) anymore you have to have kombucha, green tea, or coconut-water kefir.

I’m glad that people are focused on their health. The one thing most of us can do is exert some control over what we eat. We are fortunate that we live in a world of super-abundance. The biggest problems we have in the States come from eating TOO MUCH food! Or at least too much food that isn’t adequately nutritious. We have way too much information, too, and much of it is ill-informed, ideological, or both. Nutrition isn’t that hard. We know about essential amino acids. We know about vitamins, minerals, and other necessary trace chemicals. We know about carbohydrates, proteins, lipids (fats and oils), and fiber. We know about meat and dairy and vegetables and grains and fruits. We can be omnivores or vegans or what-have-you and still get adequate nutrition. Like I said, it’s not that hard. Dieting can be hard. That I get. Sticking to your plan takes discipline, especially with food-porn ads on TV and temptation everywhere. I don’t mean to minimize the efforts people make, just that the basic nutritional facts are pretty straightforward.

The problem is that what you eat is only one part of the health puzzle. There are plenty of hereditary factors and our levels of physical activity vary widely. We are exposed to different environmental influences as well. How we eat and what we eat is largely cultural, there is no such thing as “real” food, anything a human can and will eat is potentially food. I suppose mother’s milk, eggs, and seeds might be the only “real” foods, that is, foods designed by nature to be food for the young organism. All the rest of what we eat was determined largely by trial-and-error and what was locally available.

Thus we look for science to guide us when it comes to nutrition and unfortunately science isn’t much help. Science works incrementally, and it works by isolating variables. Studying human diets is damn near impossible without imprisoning people in a sealed environment, controlling their food supply, analyzing their poop, and monitoring their vitals. Even if you could do that for several months you might need years to learn anything. Thus science can tell us if blueberries are better antioxidants in vitro compared to red wine, but it can’t tell us if eating blueberries will prevent cancer.

So we get a million goddamn websites claiming to give us nutritional expertise when really they mostly express the biases of the self-styled nutritional experts. If you are opposed to aquaculture or genetic engineering or somesuch then you will tell people that the foods produced in those ways are bad. It has nothing to do with the food, but rather with the ideology of the food writer. In a capitalist system we exert a sort of voting pressure by our dollars and so motivated consumers buy things like “locally-grown” or “organic” or “fair trade” in order to promote those values. Thus we tie politics and personal ethics into our food decisions. Not that I have any objection to such things, just that our dietary choices are not simply about feeding our muscles and organs but also about our, for lack of a better phrase, spiritual needs. We all know Matthew 4:4 . . . Man shall not live by bread alone . . .

It is only because we are so wealthy, compared to many other places, that we spend so much time and energy on our food choices. We get to wander up and down the aisles and say “yes” or “no” to a great variety of products. We aren’t going to go hungry. We don’t have to stand in line for a loaf of bread, or even worse, for a bucket of fresh water. We can decide whether our tap water is adequate enough for our needs and replace it with another source if we don’t like it. That’s an amazing luxury. If the oat bran cereal you eat in the morning doesn’t taste good or has too much sugar in it or not enough fiber you can substitute something else. Many millions of people have no such choices, they are often concerned about whether or not they will even get a next meal.

Over the millenia of our existence human beings have eaten an extraordinary variety of things. Our bodies are robust and adaptable, we are not hothouse flowers. With 7.6 billion of us and counting, it’s going to take a hell of a lot of food to keep us going. It’s likely we’ll have to be open to some new choices and to some new attitudes about what is and isn’t food and what is and isn’t “good for you.”

I understand that rutabagas are making a play for superfood status. Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention were all over this one back in the day!