Powerful Plant-Based Super Foods: The Best Way to Eat for Maximum Health, Energy, and Weight Loss (2013)

.
Here is the plain-and-simple truth about your diet: You are what you eat. As often as you hear these words, have you ever stopped to think about the significance of them? Food has the impressive ability to affect—for better or worse—every cell and system in your body, and every time you eat you are making a choice for your mind, body, and spirit. Your food choices can make you feel tired and bloated or light and energized. They can help you stay calm and clear or feel foggy and frazzled. They can help keep your body slim and skin glowing or cause weight gain and breakouts.

What you put in your body has a significant bearing on your overall health and vitality, and the fact that food can influence your health so radically is great news indeed. It means that you can harness the power of food and use it to heal and protect your body both inside and out. And you can start right now—with superfoods.

The Magic of Superfoods
One of the simplest ways to upgrade your diet is by adding superfoods. Superfoods are the most nutrient-dense foods in the world. They are real, whole, unprocessed, plant-based foods that are packed with a wide array of health-promoting compounds, including remarkable levels of vitamins and minerals, inflammation-fighting fats, easy-to-digest proteins, and heart-healthy fiber. The plant-based superfoods in this book are also rich in a variety of phytochemicals (active compounds found only in plant foods) and cell-protecting antioxidants, which help combat the cell-damaging effects of free radicals (see sidebar “Amazing Antioxidants” for more information).

From familiar foods like blueberries and kale to lesser-known ones like açai and maca, these superstars (and the combination of beneficial compounds in them) may help reduce inflammation, slow aging, prevent or treat chronic disease, increase energy, boost mood, reduce stress, cleanse the body by supporting its natural detoxification pathways, and so much more. Superfoods are not magic bullets, but they are pretty magical.