There is no such thing as a superfood

Myths & Marketing

By KaTrina Samuels-Garrison, RD

“Superfood” has never been a scientific category. It is a shelf label — a way of making one ingredient sound like it will do a job that only a whole pattern of eating can do.

The foods that get the title are usually genuinely good foods. Berries, leafy greens, oily fish, walnuts, beans — nobody is arguing against any of them, and I am not about to start. The trouble is the promise attached: that adding one thing changes the outcome, more or less regardless of what the rest of the week looks like.

That isn't how eating works. Research on diet and long-term health consistently points to patterns — the overall shape of what someone eats across months and years — rather than to single ingredients. No berry outweighs the other twenty meals of the week. That is not a knock on berries.

Why the label sells so well

Because it is simple, and because it is purchasable. A pattern of eating is hard to photograph and impossible to put a barcode on. A jar of powder is both. And there is no regulatory definition of the word to hold anyone to, so it can imply evidence without ever having to produce any.

It also flatters us, which matters more than people admit. Adding something feels like progress in a way that keep doing roughly what you are already doing, but more often never quite does.

And the label does a quiet second harm: it moves attention, and money, away from the plain staples that would actually change someone's week. A household that buys the powder and skips the frozen vegetables has gone backwards while feeling like it went forwards.

What actually earns the description

If there is a real-world equivalent, it isn't a food. It's variety, repeated.

• Range beats rank. Different plants bring different fibres and different micronutrients. Six vegetables across a week does more for you than the “best” one eaten six times.
• Frequency beats novelty. The beans you eat twice a week matter more than the imported ingredient you bought once and left at the back of the cupboard.
• Cheap counts. Frozen spinach, tinned sardines, oats, lentils, eggs, bananas. None of these will ever be marketed as a superfood, because there is no margin in it.

A reasonable way to read the claims

When a food is sold on one dramatic benefit, two quiet questions do most of the work. Compared to what? A food described as high in something is only high relative to a comparison nobody has shown you. And how much would I have to eat? A great many claims are true in a laboratory quantity and irrelevant in a spoonful.

Neither question requires you to be cynical, or to know any biochemistry. They just move the conversation from the packaging to the plate, which is where it belongs.

Buy the blueberries if you like blueberries. Buy them as food, at food prices, and let them be one good thing among many — which is, in the end, the only way any food has ever worked.

General nutrition information, not individual medical or dietary advice. If you have a medical condition, are pregnant, or take medication that interacts with diet, talk to your own clinician or dietitian before making changes.

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