Why Adding Superfoods Is So Important When On Keto

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Keto Lacks Micronutrients - Superfoods are Dense in Micronutrients

There are many advantages to the Standard Ketogenic Diet (SKD) and many disadvantages to SKD.

When you look at the disadvantages, most of them are caused from a lack of micronutrients: vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.

It’s common in Keto, because most nutrient-dense foods are fruits, vegetables, and superfoods … which are primarily carbs.

When on SKD, only 5-10% of your calories are allowed to come from carbs. That is a huge change from the 45 – 65% that the US Department of Health Recommends [1].

Overall, most people who do SKD have a significant decrease the amount of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that they consume. This provides major disadvantages to SKD and is the #1 argument against it.

Another thing I want to cover is something called “Very Bad Cholesterol”. You’ve probably heard of Good Cholesterol (HDL) and Bad Cholesterol (LDL). But when LDL interacts with a free radical, “Very Bad Cholesterol” is formed, which sticks to your arteries. Antioxidants are what removes free radicals from our body’s, which is one reason why they are so great.

What can be scary about SKD is that you’ll likely consume way more LDL cholesterol than normal AND you are likely reducing the amount of antioxidants your consuming.

This is just another reason why I don’t recommend the Standard Ketogenic Diet, but a modification to this diet called the Daily Cyclical Ketogenic Diet … which has you adding superfoods and micronutrients into your daily routine.

Watch this video for an overview on why superfoods are so super.

What Are "Superfoods"?

While there is no set definition to the term “Superfoods”, the purpose to the term is to classify certain foods to be the healthiest foods on the planet.

Most superfoods are considered super due to their micronutrient composition.

In particular, it’s typically their antioxidant and phytochemical properties that make them be considered “super”.

Many superfoods have been used medicinally for thousands of year (hence why we call our superfood products, “Ancient”).

The reasons why superfoods are considered “super” is generally not due to the information you find on a nutrition facts panel.

For example, lets take a look at Turmeric (which is considered one of the top superfoods):

As you can see, there really isn’t much listed on the nutrition facts panel. So then what makes Turmeric so special?

The answer is found in the antioxidants that Turmeric contains – which do not get listed on nutrition facts panels.

Take a look at all the research on Turmeric and you will see over a hundred research studies linking Turmeric to health benefits.

Since there is no real definition of the term “superfoods”, I personally reserve this term only for the very top foods.

For example, some people might try to say that Oranges are superfoods because of the high amount of Vitamin C. 100 grams of Oranges have 53mg of Vitamin C. I don’t consider that a superfood. I do consider Acerola Cherries a superfood … 100 grams of Acerola Cherries have 1,600mg of Vitamin C AND contain over 150 different phytonutrients.

Types of Superfoods

There can be a lot of various ways to categories superfoods. Some people break them into categories based on their antioxidant properties. Some will categorize them based on the type of food they are (e.g. super-berries, super-grains, super-vegetables, etc.).

To makes things simple for me, I just think of superfoods into 2 categories:

Common superfoods that we typically buy fresh/frozen from the grocery store and know how to consume. Superfoods like like spinach, kale, etc. would all fall in this category.
Uncommon superfoods (or superfoods we don’t really know how to consume. Superfoods like acai, wheatgrass, turmeric, reishi mushrooms, chia seeds, etc.

Most of the uncommon superfoods are sold as powders or as supplement capsules for a few reasons:

A powder lasts a long time. Powders are made by dehydrating the superfood. When you take the water out, the shelf life can be 3-5 years on many ingredients. This is obviously important when we are talking about uncommon ingredients that aren’t even grown in the US.
Powders are an extremely dense version of the ingredient. For example, if you have 20 lbs of fresh wheatgrass, it’s not uncommon for that to turn into just 1 lb of powder. This can be beneficial because it’s a lot easier to consume 1 lb of wheatgrass powder in a month than it is to consume 20 lbs!

Superfood Variety is Important

Another very important thing to understand is that there are thousands and thousands of different types of antioxidants and phytochemicals.

One superfood will contain certain antioxidants and phytochemicals, but definitely not all of them.

We want to consume a wide variety of antioxidants and phytochemicals since they all have different health benefits. The only way to do this is by consuming a variety of superfoods.

I cannot harp on this enough. Consuming a single superfood like Pomegrante is great. But you need to consume a variety of superfoods to ensure your getting the beneficial properties of many superfoods instead of just one.

This is one of the big benefits to the superfood mixes we sell. There are 4 different mixes and each provides 9 different superfoods that are well-recognized as the most beneficial superfoods there are.

Superfoods: Powders vs. Capsules

Many superfoods are found in capsules and sold as supplements.

The biggest issue I have with taking superfoods in capsule form, is that many times you are not getting a minimum effective dose.

I’ll explain …

A standard capsule contains ~1/2 gram of superfoods in it.
A tablespoon of powder contains ~10 grams of superfoods in it.

In other words, you would have to take 20 pills to get the amount of superfoods that are in just 1 tablespoon.

In the diet plan we recommend (which is the Daily Cyclical Ketogenic Diet), we recommend consuming this most days:

Superfood Keto Coffee: Contains 1-2 tablespoons of Ancient Chocolate and/or Ancient Delight
Superfood Smoothies: Contains 1-2 tablepoons of any of our superfood mixes.

If you follow this, you would be consuming 2-4 tablespoons of superfoods per day … which would equate to taking 40-80 pills each day!

There is no way you are going to take 40-80 capsules every day.

This is why consuming superfoods in capsule form is a failed strategy.

Two Simple Ways to Add Superfoods to Your Daily Routine

1.) Add Superfoods to Your Smoothie

I’m a huge proponent to superfood smoothies for a few reasons:

Good recipes contain fruits, vegetable, common superfoods, and uncommon superfoods. They are extremely dense with micronutrients and antioxidants.
It’s very easy to consume a variety of beneficial foods at an effective dose. A superfood smoothie recipe could have 5 fresh/frozen ingredients + 9 superfoods from the mix. That’s 14 differnet superfoods in just 1 meal.
Smoothies are easy to make. Throw stuff in a blender and that’s it.
Smoothies taste great
In a smoothie – we also add fresh/frozen/dried common foods (e.g. vegetables, nuts, seeds, fruits) along with the superfoods, making everythign even healthier.
We can use a smoothie to replace one of your meals. Therefore, removing an unhealthy meal you are currently doing and replacing it with a super healthy meal.

Here’s an article I recommend you read to help you pick the best superfood smoothie recipes for you: https://mynutritionadvisor.com/what-are-our-favorite-superfood-smoothie-recipes/

To get your started, I would recommend starting off with our refill bundle. This will give you 30 servings of each superfood mix and 1 canister of our smoothie protein. The best thing is to make different smoothies to take advantage of the health benefits that come from variety. But you’ll probably find your favorites and make/re-order those more often.

2.) Add Superfoods to Your Coffee

If you are a coffee drinker … this recommendation should be a no-brainer. Many people will add cacao, maca, or cinnamon to their coffee. This is good – anytime you can add superfoods to your diet, do it.

But you can make it better by adding some Ancient Chocolate and Ancient Delight to your coffee.

If you’ve heard of Keto Coffee (aka Bulletproof coffee), add superfoods to this.

Here is our Superfood Keto Coffee Recipe: Link.

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