Millennials And Their Superfoods

 In Environment, Health, Paleo food

Millennials and their superfoods dominate the media these days. A young woman was being interviewed on television choosing food. As she reached for the coconut milk, she claimed that they, the young, were better informed on superfoods. I sighed over my cocoa, feeling, as always, rather left behind. Later, after a bowl of porridge, I recovered. I couldn’t ignore the fact that when young I thought that muesli was a superfood.

Paleo Food

My Pagan Ancestor Zuri would have laughed at us as she nibbled her gorse flowers. In my forthcoming book she loved blackberries, one of our native yet grossly underappreciated superfoods. When food was short, she would have fallen back on pignut. That has a corm at the root of the white flower in my photo. Throughout history, this corm saved communities during times of famine. This area was a Neolithic food paradise and that food built Stonehenge.

The Environment

Modern superfoods, from coconut to blueberries, are less about diet and more about marketing. They have to be expensive because so much is spent on their promotion by big business. Worse, they are all imported. There are no entrepreneurs putting megabucks behind British watercress, a true superfood. Oats, undoubtedly good for us, and yet a food reserved for horses in the US, go unsung. Almond Milk is excessively promoted because the nuts are grown in California. Yet this has to be fortified with calcium; it’s not milk and it’s not natural. Milk itself, when grown from British grass, a real superfood and environmentally sound, is both natural and local. Yet milk drinking is declining, consequently, osteoporosis grows apace.

Promotional Language

Even in restaurants, a promotional language is evident and it is directed at youngsters. What is supercharged miso? Why is raw fish, sushi, so popular if not because of promotional budgets. How to resist promotional blurb is a skill; do only the old have it? Perhaps sheer scepticism about everything is the answer. The old are well equipped for that.

Millennials and their Superfoods

The trouble with getting old is that you realise just how ignorant you were when young. Is that the case for all old people or is it just me? No sooner married, Ann and I tried an orange diet. Yes, that’s the fruit, not the colour. We felt ill and soon stopped. Yet we quickly moved away from cornflakes, white bread and margarine, the diet of our parents. We all have to wake up. It is time for cheap British superfoods to have a marketing makeover. Swede, parsnip, sprouts, cabbage, watercress, oats, and milk from grass must be first on the list.

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