Odds on the Next Superfood Craze

Every damn day someone tells me about a new “superfood” that will cure all my ills.

Got pneumonia? Cure it with acai berries! Suffering from a bad case of tennis elbow? Just mow some turmeric paste. Need to cure your insomnia? Slam a couple bottles of kefir.

I do my best to ignore the latest and greatest health crazes, opting to stick to my finely balanced diet of Delissio and delivery. (I’m living proof that the two age-old enemies can co-exist.) But every so often a famous person will endorse a new superfood (like Oprah with hemp hearts or Mischa Barton with coconut water). When this happens, I have no choice but to give in; if I’m not going to take nutritional advice from Marissa Cooper, who am I going to listen to?

Inevitably, we haven’t seen the last of the label “superfood”, nor the last celebrity endorsement thereon.

So what’s the next must-have menu item going to be, and which celeb is going to be hawking it? Here’s my best guess.

Japanese Eggplant – Mariah Carey: 1/1

Apparently Mariah Carey goes days, nay weeks, nay the perceived running time of the movie Glitter eating only purple foods. What’s the purplest food of all? Eggplant. It’s so purple that there’s an entire subcategory of the color purple named after it. (This automatically makes it more purple than both cabbage and Grimace.)

It’s also quite healthy, which I suppose is a sine qua non of a superfood.

Crickets – Angelina Jolie: 5/2

Angie’s kids are chomping down on crickets the way other young’uns might demolish Dunkaroos. [The author pauses to go get some Dunkaroos.] Crickets are actually very high in protein. People love protein. Why? Because it’s neither a carb nor a fat.

Come to think of it, why haven’t “chains of amino acids” become a superfood yet?

Skittles – Marshawn Lynch: 8/1

Now here’s a superfood I can get behind! Marshawn “BeastMode” Lynch, the dominant running back for the Seattle Seahawks, eats Skittles with a passion most reserve for the bedroom. He calls them “power pellets” and fans in Seattle regularly shower him with the tasty little nuggets after he scores a touchdown.

There isn’t any independent research showing that Skittles possess any super traits or, y’know, nutritional value. But Lynch led the NFL in touchdowns last year, and I say results speak for themselves.

Grapefruit Oil – Jennifer Lopez: 10/1

Jenny from the block walks around sniffing a vial of grapefruit oil in order to reduce her cravings for, oh what’s the word, food.

As any celebrity can tell you, eating less is always a good thing, especially when you’re really hungry and looking for something to suppress your appetite.

Penguin – Nicolas Cage: 20/1

Nick Cage only eats animals that have “dignified sex”. Know who has the most dignified sex? Emperor penguins.

According to Neatorama,

Penguin couples spend their lives apart from each other and meet once a year in late March, after traveling as far as 70 miles (112 km) inland … to reach the breeding site.

Once there, penguins look for their mates by making a bugling call. Male penguins generally stay in one place, lower their head to their chest and call out to the females. Once they find one another, they … stand breast to breast, repeatedly bow to each other and sing …

Now there’s a mating routine that even Queen Victoria could handle. It’s only a matter of time before Nick goes looking for some Penguin meat. Once he does, the masses will follow; he’s quite the trendsetter, after all. (The only reason cocaine is so popular in Hollywood is because Nick started using it to clear a sinus infection.)

Air – Gwyneth Paltrow: 50/1

Gwyneth is the mama bear of celebrity-cum-nutritionists. (Click on that link before leaving me angry comments.) But her main advice seems to be, “Don’t eat that! Or that! That’s ok … psych, no it’s not; don’t touch it!”

Eventually she’ll cut out all foodstuffs from her diet and become a breatharian. Oh how it will change her life and yours! And also her bank account when she writes another goddamn book about it and the gullible eat it up … er, I mean breathe it in.

(Photo credit: liz west from Boxborough, MA (eggplant) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo may appear cropped.)