Power foods tipped to be on all our lips

LAST YEAR, faddy foodies were spiralising vegetables and whizzing up smoothies and green drinks in Nutribullets, not to mention turning cauliflower into rice, couscous and even pizza bases. Before that, cold-pressed juice was all the rage — but now juicing is so passé, with juice detoxes and coldpressed juice getting a thumbs-down from nutritionists.

“Juice cleanses don’t help you at all,” says Laura Southern of London Food Therapy. “Do them long-term and you can actually damage your health, as the fruit sugars in juices are absorbed too quickly and will send your insulin levels shooting up; plus they will actually reinforce your sweet tooth.”

Nutritionist Ian Marber echoes Southern’s view: “Cold-pressed juices make no difference nutritionally and are often extremely expensive, which can actually put people off making a healthy choice.”

So what are the food fads for this year?

SUPER FOODS

“Super food powders”, made up of fruits like baobab or goldenberries or matcha (ground-up green tea) promise all kinds of benefits. What’s so super about them?

“A super food is any food with a publicist,” says Marber wryly. “Matcha can be helpful for health and some of the powders do provide antioxidants but some studies say that high doses of

CHIA AND FLAX SEEDS

Chia and flax seeds have made it mainstream. Grind them into your smoothie, mix them into your porridge or, with chia seeds — which swell up and become like tiny gelatinous capsules — combine them with fruit purées to make breakfast pots or desserts. Even Jamie Oliver offers them up in his most recent book. So should we be adding them to our kitchen stores? Nutritionists are not too dismissive.

“I recommend both ground flax seed and chia seeds to lots of my clients and do find them a useful addition to diets,” says Southern. “They are useful for vegans as they contain high levels of omega 3.”

“There’s nothing wrong with them; in a few years they’ll be mundane,” says Marber. “But if you’re going to eat them, do it because they are tasty, not because they are sold to you as glutenfree or whatever.”

GLUTEN-FREE

Pretty well any bakery product is available in gluten-free form, with a wealth