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It’s time to look beyond the shiny branding and social media-endorsed diets. Bazaar tells you what you really need to know about superfoods.

- Chinmayee Manjunath

WHEN MICHAEL VAN STRATEN AND BARBARA GRIGGS CO-WROTE THE COOKBOOK SUPERFOODS (Dorling Kindersley) in 1990, they coined a term that’s become both a marketing behemoth and a scientific bugbear. In the of-the-moment world of nutritional trends, there is probably no term that’s bandied around more than ‘superfoods’. Quinoa, kale, bee pollen, chia seeds, goji berries, cold-pressed coconut oil, ghee, avocados, ancient grains, and myriad flours are each marketed as the ingredient to fix stress levels, polish up skin, clean out the gut, and balance mind/body/spirit. 2016 was the year of the cauliflower and the golden latté—also known to Indians as haldi doodh.

It’s easy to get caught up in the shiny-happy branding and Instagram-friendly meals that are a part of the superfoods universe. But if food really is our medicine, must we not approach it with a healthy dose of curiosity, starting with understanding what a superfood really means? The Oxford Dictionary now defines it as “a nutrient rich food considered to be especially beneficial for health and well-being”, which throws the term open to even more interpretation.

In a piece for the journal The Conversation in 2013, scholars Emma Beckett and Zoe Yates wrote, “Superfood is not a scientifically or technically defined term. But that doesn’t mean there’s no scientific research into superfoods. Researchers just don’t call them ‘super’. And there’s a good reason for this: The giant leap from testing foods in the lab to their amazing marketed powers is simply too far to be scientifically orethically sound.”