Christine Kaufmann
Today we’re going to talk about the top 10 healthiest foods to eat that are super beneficial to your health and overall well-being. We will be going a little detailed on why these foods are the best foods to eat for longevity.
I just wanted to list the top ten healthiest foods but then I thought that’s kind of misleading because it leaves out so many other foods. It’s also tends to give us the wrong idea about what a food is supposed to do.
Table of Contents
A Caution on the Idea of Superfoods
So often you see examples of superfoods that people say that people say this the food that you should eat. Or sometimes they ask questions like what’s the #1 healthiest food for us to eat?
What then happens is that people want to find this food and they want to eat nothing but this food.
That gives us the wrong idea of food. It gives us the idea that the food is supposed to do something. Sometimes people would as that oh I have a headache what food am I supposed to eat? I have high blood pressure what food am I supposed to eat?
You’re supposed to eat a variety of foods. The foods aren’t supposed to do anything in terms of treating or changing or altering body function.
They’re just supposed to provide the nutrients that your body needs. So we want to get away from the idea of superfoods.
Now there’s some foods that get pretty close to being superfoods. They’re so jam-packed of good stuff there’s just nothing bad to say about them.
We don’t want to think about them as treating anything we want to get away from the number one healthiest food. We want to understand that it’s the variety that complements each other and gives the body all the different building blocks and all the different catalysts and vitamins and minerals that it’s gonna need.
The Idea of Natural Foods
Another thing I want to caution on is natural foods. Just because something is in the section called “Natural Foods” doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a healthy food. They’re often made with better ingredients and they don’t use as many chemicals but very often there’s still highly processed. So just be aware of that.
And you know it’s quite funny to see that section in a grocery store that’s called natural foods. I tend to ask myself if there is a section called natural foods why don’t they label the rest of the store unnatural foods? Anyway it’s just a thought.
Categories of Healthiest Foods to Eat
There are so many healthy foods so instead of talking about single food items, we’re talking about categories.
1. Non-Starchy Vegetables
The first category of healthiest food to eat often is non-starchy vegetables. These foods are not listed in any particular order because it’s the variety that provides the nutrition.
So non-starchy vegetables include the following:
Leafy greens such as lettuce, spinach, kale and any sort of edible leaf. They are very very high in nutrients, in minerals and vitamins, and fiber.
They are also very low in carbohydrates, starch and sugar. Eat as much of these as you can.
Then there are things like broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. These aren’t leafy but there’s still low starch.
So those are also things that you can eat so learn as you go which vegetables have less than 5% carbs 5% net carbs so you take the total carbs you subtract the fiber because some things have like 15 grams of carbs but it’s almost all fiber then those are still perfectly fine alright so learn which ones have less than 5% net ARBs and those you can eat plenty of and these vegetables provide enormous amounts of nutrients such as vitamins and minerals primarily
2. Berries
