Natural Superfoods Without The Expense.

You can buy expensive superfoods, or you can have them every day for a fraction of the price.

Super foods are foods which are particularly nutrient dense – that is, they have lots of vitamins, minerals, and enzymes, and not too much fat or sugar.

You’ll find many products in health food stores and on the Internet. These might be good for you, but not for your pocket. There are many natural foods that are equally good, and much cheaper.

The 3 best natural superfoods are sprouts, berries and probiotics

(1) Sprouted seeds are one of the most nutritious foods.

Almost any seed can be sprouted. Just soak overnight in a jar or bowl. The seeds do the rest, soaking up the water and starting to grow. Just rinse them with fresh water once or twice a day.

These seeds are a storehouse of nutrients, enough to feed a new plant until it has put down roots and opened it’s first leaves. When they are hard and dry only a fraction of this is available as food - but soak them overnight and all that potential is released.

Vitamin content of sprouted seeds can be 20 times the vitamin content of the mature plant.

One man worked out that he 'could live healthily and well on an all-sprout diet for a mere 25 cents a day’ (from ‘Raw Energy’, by Leslie and Susannah Kenton).

As they begin to grow, enzymes are activated, more vitamins are formed, complex proteins are broken down into simple ones. Sprouts are plants at their most vital, nutrient-dense stage.

You can sprout beans, lentils, grains and seeds. The traditional Chinese bean sprouts are mung beans. Alfalfa takes the longest at five to six days; many others take only a day. Chickpeas (garbanzos) are my favorite – you can eat them after only a day or two. I like to make hummus with raw, sprouted garbanzos.

Add sprouts to salads or sandwiches, or eat them on their own as a healthy, low-calorie snack.


(2) Most berries are superfoods. Like seeds, they’re full of goodness packed in a small (and delicious) form. Berries are generally high in vitamin C and other antioxidants. These help protect your body from damage that causes signs of aging and can increase the risk of cancer.

You don't need to buy exotic berries from the other side of the world. Use whatever berries grow locally, especially ones that you can grow yourself.

Blueberries also are very high in vitamin C and bioflavanoids. You can grow them too, but they need an acid soil. I’ve got two plants in pots – I’m looking forward to the first crop.

Blackberries are another great food. Harvest them from hedgerows away from busy roads or farmland that’s been sprayed with chemicals. Strawberries are good too – choose the smaller, sweeter varieties – the modern, large types are not so nutrient rich.

Goji, or wolfberry, is one that has become very popular recently. Dried goji berries are sold in health food stores (looking rather like red raisins), but you can grow them yourself and eat the berries fresh.

Berries are delicious on their own, in a fruit salad or in fruit smoothies.

Currants (red, white or black) are similar to berries in having lots of vitamin C and bioflavanoids. A bit sharp in flavor, you can mix them with other fruit. Currants are easy to grow. My blackcurrant bush gave me pounds of fruit last year, - and my redcurrant bush gave pounds of fruit to the birds! (This year I’ll cover it with a net.)

I freeze what I can’t use straight away, and add a handful of frozen currants to fruit smoothies. That way I have currants through most of the winter.

(I grow strawberries too – but there are never any left to freeze – they don’t often get as far as the house, let alone the freezer. The whole family loves them.)

(3) The third group of superfoods is probiotics. These are the good bacteria that help digestion and control the ‘bad’ bacteria. Most countries have traditional foods that are sources of good bacteria – live yoghurt or kefir, sauerkraut, sourdough bread, fermented soy products such as tofu, miso, tempeh, and shoyu.

Traditionally made beer, pickles, cottage cheese and aged cheeses also have probiotics, but the modern, mass-produced varieties may not have.


There are many other foods that could be classed as superfoods, but you don’t have to pay a lot of money for imported specialty foods to be healthy. Sprouts, berries and probiotics make a great addition to any diet.

I haven't listed these as one of the main superfoods because most people don't have juice extractors, and they can be very expensive to buy.

If you don’t have a juice extractor you can do it the old fashioned way. Using a fine grater, grate the fruit and vegetables and squeeze the juice out of the pulp. It's a lot of work, but worth the effort.

Of course, raw fruits and vegetables are good for you even without being juiced. Make salads a large part of your diet every day and you’ll soon feel the benefit.

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