10 Healthiest Foods for the Planet

Fair-Trade Quinoa

Benefit for Your Body: This ancient South American “pseudo-grain” (called that because it’s technically a seed) is packed with more protein than any other grain, and on top of that, it’s a complete protein that contains all nine essential amino acids, acids your body can’t produce on its own to build muscle and create more protein.

Hemp

Benefit for Your Body: Hemp is another plant that, like quinoa, supplies the body with all nine essential amino acids. The fatty acids in hemp seeds and hemp milk also boost the immune system.

Shade-Grown Chocolate

Benefit for Your Body: It lowers your blood pressure, and it’s full of flavonols, antioxidants that fight the inflammation that can trigger heart problems. Neurological studies also suggest that these same flavonols may ward off depression and age-related declines in brain function. Need more reasons to eat chocolate?  One chocolate-loving researcher reports that countries with higher cocoa consumption also had a higher number of Nobel Prize winners.

Lentils

Benefit for Your Body: Bite for bite, lentils are the best source of vegetarian protein you can find, boasting more of the muscle-building nutrient than 3 ounces of salmon. Plus, they’ll satisfy more than 60 percent of your daily fiber requirement.

Honey

Benefit for Your Body: Honey is often touted as a cure-all for everything from burns (put raw honey on a burn as soon as possible to speed healing) to cuts and scrapes (honey’s natural antiseptic properties allow it to work a bit like hydrogen peroxide). And research by food scientists at the University of Illinois found that honey, especially dark honey, slowed the action of LDL “bad” cholesterol in test-tube studies. Buckwheat honey seemed to have the biggest effect.

Wild Boar

Benefit for Your Body: Wild boar is chock-full of vitamin B, which can help ward off depression and just, in general, keep you in a good mood. A 3-ounce serving provides more than 70 percent of the recommended amounts of niacin, a B vitamin that lowers bad cholesterol and boosts the good, and thiamine and B₆, two vitamins that boost your energy levels. It’s also rich in zinc, which fortifies your immune system.

Shade-grown Coffee

Benefit for Your Body:Antioxidant-loaded coffee is rich in cell-protecting choline and potassium, and chemicals contained in the beans have been shown to affect your metabolism in a way that wards off diabetes. Choosing shade-grown offers even more protection. Shade-grown coffee helps preserve the rain-forest canopy, which pulls carbon from the air and stores it in the soil so it never reaches the atmosphere, where it would contribute to the greenhouse effect. Dealing with climate change will help tone down allergies, Lyme disease, and West Nile virus, ailments all worsening as the climate heats up.

Ghee

Benefit for Your Body: Also called “clarified” or “drawn” butter, ghee is the result of melting butter over a low temperature to boil away excess water and remove milk fats. Ghee made from the milk of pasture-raised cows contains concentrated levels of cancer-fighting and heart-protecting conjugated linoleic acids.

Flax

Benefit for Your Body: Flax seed is loaded with fiber and cancer-fighting magnesium, and adding just 2 tablespoons of ground seed to things like oatmeal, salads, or smoothies also provides a fast and easy dose of brain-boosting vitamin B₁. The 8th century European ruler Charlemagne thought the health benefits of flax so great, he passed laws requiring his subjects to eat it!

Organic Kefir

Benefit for Your Body: Kefir is like drinkable yogurt, absolutely teeming with protiotics that help safeguard your immune system, knock out colds, and keep your digestive tract healthy and ready to remove toxic chemicals from your body. Just be sure it’s low in sugar to reap the ultimate belly benefits. When your kefir comes from grass-fed cows, the milk used to make the drink contains significantly higher levels of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids and could even lower your heart-attack risk.