The Healthiest Foods: A Definitive List

In case you’re a bit confused about what polyphenols are, they are chemicals found in plants that are often collectively referred to as phytochemicals. There are at least 8,000 of these polyphenols, and individually and collectively they have amazing effects on the animals that eat them.

You know when someone says that this fruit, vegetable or plant is anti-inflammatory? Or that it prevents or fights cancer? Or that it stabilizes blood sugar, improves fat metabolism, treats cardiovascular disease, prevents Alzheimer’s, or improves the efficiency of bacteria in your digestive system?

It’s all down to polyphenols (and, to a lesser extent, carotenoids). And yes, fruits and vegetables contain many of them, but they are not the only food groups that contain them. There are, in fact, four broad classes of polyphenols:

1. Stilbenes: resveratrol it is a stilbene. It and its cousins ​​are commonly found in red wines and peanuts, among other foods.
2. Phenolic Acid: These types are found in coffee, tea, cherries, blueberries, and many other fruit drinks.
3. Flavonoids: This is the largest class of polyphenols. They are found in green tea, red wine, legumes, and all kinds of fruits and vegetables.
4. Lignans: These are found in flaxseeds, algae, cereals, legumes, various grains, and various fruits and vegetables.

The right types and the right amounts of polyphenols may one day give us the supposedly mythical “exercise in a pill” that modern nutritional alchemists have been searching for. Polyphenols could end up curing countless diseases. They can extend not only the lifespan but also the “health span,” where men and women age but retain the vigor, strength, and mobility of youth.

That’s why any list of the healthiest foods that doesn’t take into account polyphenol content is suspect, and yes, I’m talking about the three food classification systems I just finished describing. Everyone should have referred to the Phenol-Explorer database to see the top 100 dietary sources of polyphenols.

If they had, they would have seen some foods they hadn’t even considered when compiling their healthiest food lists. And they might have seen some of the same foods on their lists, but for different reasons.

Now, it seems to me that if you found foods that were considered “healthier” on one, two, or three lists, seeing the same food on the list of the 100 Highest Dietary Sources of Polyphenols might have affected how you ranked that food.

In fact, that’s what I was looking for when compiling my list of the healthiest foods, but before I list them, let’s take a quick look at the top 100 list (top 104, actually). Twenty-two of the top polyphenol foods were in the condiment group, followed by fruits (20), seeds (16 items), vegetables (16 items), non-alcoholic beverages (11 items), cereals (10 items), cocoa products (4 items), alcoholic beverages (3 items) and oils (2 items).

The highest polyphenol content, by a wide margin, was found in cloves—yes, those flower buds that look like little railroad spikes that are a staple of Middle Eastern cuisine. The cloves contained more than 15,000 mg. of polyphenols per 100 grams. At the bottom of the list was rosé wine, with 7.8 mg. per 100 ml.

I will now stop there and divulge nothing more about the list, or at least this particular list. You may have already noticed the problem: Who the hell is going to eat a “portion” of cloves, or for that matter, 100 grams of any of the other 21 condiments that ranked high on the list?

Yes, no one. But the scientists who compiled the list were aware of the inherent problem with that list, so they created another list, one that was really useful. If a particular food had more than 1 milligram of polyphenols per serving, it was on the second list. So instead of cloves topping the list, the highest-ranking foods were a quartet of “black” berries.

Unsurprisingly, none of the 22 condiments that appeared on the first list made the second (since no data was found on the serving sizes of the condiments, probably because, as stated, no one eats “servings” of spices ).

Of this second list, 23 were fruits, 23 vegetables, 16 seeds, 10 non-alcoholic beverages, 6 cereals, 5 alcoholic beverages, 4 cocoa products, and 2 oils. Keep in mind that serving sizes vary greatly from one food to another. For example, a serving of blueberries weighs 145 grams, while a serving of dark chocolate weighs 17 grams, but this is a much more realistic reflection of how we might eat these foods.

Here are the top 20:

1. Black elderberry: 1956 mg. of polyphenols per serving
2. Black aronia: 1595 mg.
3. Black currant: 1092 mg.
4. Highbush blueberry: 806 mg.
5. Balloon artichoke heads: 436 mg.
6. Coffee, filtered: 408 mg.
7. Low bush blueberry: 395 mg.
8. Sweet cherry: 394 mg.
9. Strawberry: 390mg.
10. Blackberry: 374 mg.
11. Plum: 320 mg.
12. Red raspberry: 310 mg.
13. Flaxseed meal: 306 mg.
14. Dark chocolate: 283mg.
15. Chestnut: 230 mg.
16. Black tea: 197 mg.
17. Green tea: 173mg.
18. Pure apple juice: 168 mg.
19. Apple: 149mg.
20. Whole wheat rye bread: 146 mg.

Other notables on the list, things most of us in the US might eat on a regular basis, include black olives (85mg), spinach (70mg), green olives (52mg), black beans (52mg). .), potatoes (36), broccoli (33 mg.), beer (22 mg.), almonds (19 mg.), whole wheat flour (14 mg.), extra virgin olive oil (10 mg.), carrots (7.6 mg), cauliflower (2.7 mg), banana (2.5 mg), tomato (2.1 mg), and pomegranate (1.1 mg).