Flavonoids: an introduction
What are flavonoids? In the first week we already mentioned the fact that some antioxidative or anti-inflammatory property of foods is used as a reason to elevate them to “super” …
Course: Superfoods: Myths and Truths
What comes next: week 3 and beyond
What effect do flavonoids have on our health? Most likely if you think of a superfood – be it berries or tea, cocoa or kale, you are thinking of a …
Quinoa – boon or bane for the Andean highlands?
Did quinoa affect the economy and diets in the Andean highlands? Sometimes superfoods demand drives up their prices considerably, changing their status from traditional food into cash crops. This was …
Buckwheat: a “super” grain
Why is buckwheat a super grain? Not all gluten-free alternatives are equally known to the consumer, but buckwheat is a grain with a very long history of human use and …
Gluten-free diets – 2
What are the consequences of gluten-free diets? Myths about gluten lead towards gluten-free choices by many people that have no medical reasons for them. Usually, this is not a good …
Gluten-free diets – 1
Gluten-free products are common, but what is gluten? In the first of a series of two videos, dr. Krupa-Kozak introduces gluten and its characteristics. Where is it found? What role …
Overview of USDA Food Composition Databases
How to use the USDA Food Composition Database In the previous step, we described the opportunity of using web databases to look for the nutrient content of specific foods, and …
Nutritional content databases
How can we find new alternatives to superfoods? In the last video we mentioned a few alternatives to superfoods, but these are by no means the only possible substitutions. To …
Superfood alternatives
What are some alternatives to common superfoods? The first activity of this week is focused on finding foods that are similar to superfoods, but are more available, cheaper or more …
Introduction to Week 2
What is the nutrient content of superfoods? What are their alternatives? As we anticipated in the first week, despite the lack of an official definition, one of the characteristics of …
What comes next: week 2 and beyond
How can we find new superfoods? This week we introduced many concepts linked to superfoods, and we started to explore the scientific research linked to some of them – notably, …
Examples of Phytochemicals in Foods
In this activity, we offered a quick overview of what micro and macronutrients are, as food items sold with the “superfood” label often contain high amounts of some essential nutrient. …
Macronutrients, micronutrients and phytochemicals
Superfoods are often defined on the basis of their content of nutritional content. This includes micronutrients, their macronutrient profile or their content of phytochemicals. In this video, we discuss these …
Probiotics and prebiotics
Our gut microbiome is linked with our health. It is therefore of no surprise that foods that can influence our gut bacteria, by increasing the number of beneficial ones, received …
Meet the team
The team This course was created by scientists coming from three institutions: the University of Torino, the Polish Academy of Sciences – IARFR and the University of Reading. We specialize …