Making Your Diet Super

If you're looking to get the most nutritional bang for your food-shopping buck, you should add these 10 'super foods' to your diet, recommends Men's Health magazine: ➢ Beets. Packed with folate and betaine, beets help lower levels of an inflammatory compound linked with artery damage and heart disease. The pigment giving beets their crimson color also may fight cancer. ➢ Cabbage. Low in calories and brimming with nutrients like sulforaphane, cabbage can help reduce cancer risks by increasing the production of key enzymes. ➢ Guava. Just one cup of this tropical fruit provides more potassium than bananas, more prostate cancer-fighting lycopene than tomatoes, and nearly 9 grams of colon-healthy fiber. ➢ Swiss chard. This leafy green contains lutein and zeacanthrin, which protect your retinas from damage caused by aging. ➢ Cinnamon. Just one gram of cinnamon per day can lower blood-sugar levels, decrease cholesterol and triglycerides, and reduce heart disease risks. ➢ Purslane. Herb-like Purslane has more heart-healthy omega-3 fats of any edible plant and contains 10 to 20 times more cancer-fighting melatonin than any other fruit or vegetable. ➢ Pomegranate juice. Just a few ounces of this Middle Eastern fruit juice can lower blood-pressure levels by more than 20% and provide up to half of your daily vitamin C needs. ➢ Goji berries. These raisin-sized fruits used medicinally in Tibet for more than 1,700 years have the strongest antioxidant power of any fruit and have been shown to reduce insulin resistance, a pre-cursor to diabetes. ➢ Prunes. Technically dried plums, prunes help prevent cellular damage by combating the 'superoxide anion radical' thought to be a primary cause of cancer. ➢ Pumpkin seeds. The most nutritious part of a pumpkin, the seeds are a key provider of magnesium. Studies have shown men with the highest levels of magnesium in their blood have a 40% lower risk of early death.