You’ll Be Surprised These Are SuperFoods!

This isn’t your run-of-the-mill superfood list. We bet you expecting blueberries & green tea. Nope!  While those antioxidant superstars often steal the show thanks to their amazing health benefits, the truth is, there are lots of underdogs that deserve some serious superfood props, too.

Popcorn

This simple snack is loaded with antioxidants—more so than most fruits! Popcorn kernels are bursting with 4 times more polyphenols—potent cancer-fighting plant compounds—compared to the average amount found in fruits. Just be sure to pass on the movie theater kind and make your own. A typical movie theater popcorn contains 825 calories, 46 grams of fat, including heart-damaging trans fat, and nearly 1,500 milligrams of sodium.

Oregano

This herb may be a staple for pizza and tomato sauce, but it also boasts powerful medicine cabinet credentials, too. Two of the plant’s volatile oils, thymol and carvacrol, have been shown in test-tube research to have antimicrobial and antifungal properties tough enough to kill some E. coli, staph, and salmonella germs!

The natural antibiotic immune booster contains 20 times more cancer-fighting antioxidant power than other herbs, on average. According to USDA researchers, 1 tablespoon of fresh oregano has the same antioxidant power as an entire apple. And gram for gram, the herb has twice the antioxidant activity of blueberries, long known for their antioxidant ability.

Chicken Bones

To be clear, we’re not suggesting you eat chicken bones, but rather cook up nourishing broth using the leftover chicken carcass and bones. This traditional food is packed full of minerals that will improve digestion, nourish your joints, tendons, skin, and ligaments, and bolster your immune system (they don’t say eat chicken soup when you’re sick for nothing!).

tip: Be sure to boil your broth from a pasture-raised chicken. Most store-bought chickens are raised on a steady diet of drugs, harmful additives, and low-quality feed, something you don’t want to cook down into a broth.

Oysters

It’s true, oysters really do serve as an aphrodisiac. The reason? They contain more zinc per serving than any other food. Zinc is a key mineral for sexual health in men, and also a critical nutrient for mood stabilization. Prep tip: To help preserve wild populations, choose domestic farmed oysters. You can refrigerate live oysters on a cookie sheet, flat-side up, covered with a damp towel, for about a week, but you should cook them as soon as possible. You can also buy them frozen or smoked.

Sauerkraut

Cabbage is teeming with cancer-fighting compounds, but turn it into sauerkraut, and you’ve got an even greater raw-food wonder. Sauerkraut the way your great-grandmother likely made it—fermented in a crock—is a probiotic powerhouse than can help promote digestive health, something that’s especially important during cold and flu season. After all, your gut is the base of your immune system.