What “superfood” actually means

Walk down the health-food aisle at Woolworths or New World and you will see the word on bags of seeds, tubs of powder and even the odd block of chocolate. It sounds official. It sounds like a grade, the way “free range” or “wholemeal” sounds like a grade. It is not.

In New Zealand, food labels are governed by the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, which is written and maintained by Food Standards Australia New Zealand and enforced here by the Ministry for Primary Industries. The Code sets rules for what can be said about the nutrients in a food and about any link between a food and health. Nowhere does it define a “superfood”. There is no test a food has to pass, no list it has to be on and no panel that hands out the title. When you see the word, you are reading marketing.

That does not mean the food inside is bad. Chia seeds, cocoa, berries and leafy greens are all perfectly good things to cook with. It means the word itself tells you nothing you can check.

Where the rules actually bite

The parts of a label that are regulated are worth knowing, because they are the parts you can rely on.

Nutrition content claims. A packet that says “high in fibre” or “low fat” is making a nutrition content claim, and the Code sets conditions for using phrases like that. The nutrient it mentions also has to appear in the nutrition information panel on the back, so you can check the number yourself.

Health claims. A packet that links a food to a health effect is making a health claim. Under Standard 1.2.7 of the Code, those claims have to rest on a food-health relationship that has been substantiated, either one of the relationships already approved in the Code or one the company has worked through a systematic review process and notified to FSANZ. FSANZ explains the two levels on its claims page. The point for a home cook is simple: the word “superfood” is not one of those regulated claims. It is the vaguest thing on the packet.

The ingredient list. This is the most honest part of any label. Ingredients must be listed in descending order by ingoing weight, so the first ingredient is the one there is most of. A “superfood” snack bar whose first two ingredients are dates and rice syrup is, by weight, mostly a sweet bar. That is fine if you want a sweet bar. It is just worth knowing.

How to read a claim on a packet

When we look at a bag in the aisle, we ask four quiet questions.

1. What is it, in one plain word? Seeds. Dried fruit. Ground leaves. Cocoa. If the plain word is less exciting than the front of the pack, the excitement is coming from the design team.
2. What else is in it? Turn it over and read the ingredient list. One ingredient is the ideal for a pantry staple. Added sugar, oil or flavouring is worth noticing, especially near the top of the list.
3. What does a normal serve weigh, and what does it cost? Many of these foods are eaten a spoonful at a time. Work out the cost of one spoonful, not the cost of the bag.
4. Is there a regulated claim, or just a feeling? “Source of fibre” can be checked against the panel. “Ancient”, “nutrient powerhouse” and “superfood” cannot.

The useful idea underneath: nutrient density

Strip away the marketing and there is a sensible idea in there. Some foods carry a lot of useful nutrients for the energy they provide. Nutrition people call this nutrient density. Vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds tend to sit at the dense end. Soft drinks, lollies and most deep-fried snacks sit at the other.

The catch is that nutrient density is a property of a whole way of eating, not a single ingredient. A spoonful of an expensive powder stirred into an otherwise beige week does not change much. A plate that is half vegetables most nights does. That is roughly the shape of the healthy plate model on Health New Zealand’s eating well page: half the plate non-starchy vegetables or salad, a quarter whole grains or starchy vegetables such as potato or kūmara, and a quarter protein-rich food such as legumes, eggs, fish or lean meat.

Notice what is on that list. Kūmara, cabbage, carrots, frozen peas, oats, canned chickpeas, eggs. None of them has a marketing department, and all of them are dense in the sense that matters.

A fair comparison, done at the bench

Here is a comparison we find useful, with made-up but realistic numbers so the arithmetic is clear. Say a 250 g bag of a dried powder costs $15, and a serve is one heaped teaspoon of about 5 g. That bag holds 50 serves at 30 cents each. Now say a 1 kg bag of rolled oats costs $3 and a serve is 40 g. That is 25 serves at 12 cents each.

On a cost-per-serve basis the two are not as far apart as the bag prices suggest. The real difference is in what each serve does for your cooking. Forty grams of oats is breakfast. Five grams of powder is a colour and a flavour. Both are fine. Only one of them is a meal.

That is the test we use all through this site. We do not ask whether a food is super. We ask what it is, what it tastes like, how you cook with it, what a normal portion looks like and whether it is worth the money in your kitchen.

What the old marketing got wrong

Plenty of pantry foods were sold in the last decade with stories about ancient warriors, mountain villagers who lived to a great age and powders that would transform you. Those stories were rarely backed by evidence that would satisfy the Food Standards Code, which is exactly why you so seldom saw them as formal health claims on a label. They lived on websites and in brochures instead.

If you come across a story like that, the kind response is curiosity, not belief. Ask where it came from. Look for the regulated words on the pack. And then cook with the food on its own merits, because many of these ingredients are genuinely good to cook with once you stop expecting wonders from a teaspoon.

Where to go next

The rest of the launch shelf takes the most talked-about pantry foods one at a time: chia seeds, goji berries, cocoa and cacao, coconut oil, smoothies and greens powders and the sugar in your day. Each one starts with what the food is and ends with how to use it.

General information only — not medical or dietary advice. For advice about your own diet, see your GP or a NZ-registered dietitian.