7 Superfoods Backed by Science to Boost Health
Sprouts of broccoli, skim milk, salmon: Harvard Health and other experts explain the how they, and several other superfoods, help to fight disease, strengthen the heart, and brighten your plate year-round.
| 01 Aug 2025 | 04:15
All cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, are considered superfoods and contain cancer-fighting compounds but . . . (
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. . . two Johns Hopkins docs have recently explained that broccoli sprouts (five-day-old sprouts shown above) are an especially powerful source of cancer-fighting antioxidants. (
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Summer is salad season whose crisp greens brighten and lighten an overheated day. But for summer, winter, spring, and fall, the nutrition experts at Harvard Health have issued a list of superfoods highlighting seven stars: broccoli, skim milk, whole grains, beans, oranges, and salmon.
All cruciferous veggies contain cancer-fighting compounds called isothiocyanates, but in September 1997 Johns Hopkins medicos Paul Talalay and Dr. Jed W. Fahey published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, explaining that broccoli sprouts are an exceptionally rich source of glucoraphanin. A potent antioxidant that prevents molecular fragments called free radicals from hooking up to form dangerous—read cancer-causing—compounds. Right after that, they and some colleagues patented their very own variety of broccoli sprouts and incorporated Brassica Protection Products LLC to market gourmet green and black teas containing antioxidant compound TrueBroc. Nine years later, in April 2016, the company launched light- and dark-roast Brassica® Coffee with TrueBroc®!
Skim milk is a close second. To develop properly, infants and young children need the fatty acids, including cholesterol, in whole milk, but for older kids and adults, milk’s major benefit is calcium. Skimming the fat leaves more room for the mineral: An eight-ounce glass of fat-free milk has 306 milligrams calcium versus 285 in the same glass of whole milk. Hate milk? Get the calcium from nonfat ice cream or yogurt, both firmly ensconced on the list of 10 best children’s foods from the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Next, whole grains. Yes, you can get your vitamins and minerals from any enriched bread, but whole-grain breads still have more minerals and dietary fiber plus plant compounds similar to cholesterol that actually block your body from absorbing cholesterol itself. Which is why FDA approves labels noting that “Diets rich in whole-grain foods may reduce the risk of heart disease.”
Beans are loaded with dietary fiber, especially the soluble kind that flush cholesterol out of the body. There are so many different types of beans and other legumes (plants in the Fabaceae or Leguminosae family), such as green peas and peanuts, that anyone can find a favorite. While people can consume some fresh legumes such as green peas, as a rule the edible seeds from these plant foods are dried or canned because some raw beans contain lectins, toxic proteins that bind to carbs and prevent them from being absorbed. Soaking and cooking the beans inactivate lectins.
Oranges are pure sunshine. Just one serves up all the vitamin C an adult body needs each day, plus folate, the heart-healthy B vitamin, dietary fiber; and hesperidin, a blood-vessel booster found in the white stuff around the juicy fruit.
Salmon’s plentiful protective Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids make it king of the fish family. The edible bones in canned salmon add calcium, but the bones in fresh salmon are too hard to swallow safely: They might poke around your gastro tract once they make it past your throat.
Saving the best for a surprise, No. 7: dark chocolate. The antioxidant flavonoids in just one 1.6-ounce serving for two weeks can make blood less sticky, thus reducing the risk of a clogged artery. Dark chocolate also has dietary fiber, caffeine, iron, zinc, the muscle stimulant theobromine and—icing on the cake—the mood enhancer phenylethyl alanine.