Now, when you visualize something after hearing the word, “Superfood”,
You probably imagine some impossibly-expensive super-bean from the north shore of Bali, the darkest part of the Amazon, the bleakest steppes of Maine blueberry-country, or Gwynneth Paltrow’s blog.
But the scientists at Rutgers had a different idea:
What if you could make a superfood out of something common, that normal people eat every day without a second thought?
Well, after some research and experimentation, they did just that.
-And it’s a Lettuce!
Yup, a simple-old lettuce.
The newly-engineered roughage Dr. Ilya Raskin’s team created qualifies as a superfood because it’s higher in vitamins A&C, a few minerals, and is absolutely jam-packed with antioxidants and polyphenols;
-allegedly 2-3x that of even the mighty Blueberry! -BOOM!
Sweeter still, lettuce carries almost Zero caloric load, especially when compared to berries, dark chocolate, or red wine. So you can fill up on awesome & not get fat.
-AND, unlike blueberries, it can be grown year-round in widely-varying conditions and is much more easily harvested (much to the dismay of blueberry-rake-wielding amateur sadist Martha Stewart, I’d imagine).
All of which means that as soon as production ramps-up, the Price for high quantity + quality of antioxidants in your diet should be A LOT cheaper than going the blueberry/acai/noni/goji route.
For now the plant, called Rutgers Scarlet, will be produced by Coastline Family Farms and marketed under the name, “NutraLeaf”.
And for the more sciency-bits:
1) A trial study with mice showed that RSL helps mitigate diabetes better than the regular types of lettuce.
2) No, it’s not Genetically-Modified in the modern-science version of that term, where big evil corporations put zebrafish, black-widow-spider, and goat dna into cows making the milk for your ice cream.
What Dr. Raskin’s team did is more like standard plant-hybridizing with some stem-cell mojo thrown in.
-So don’t worry!
More info at the Links:
Photo Credits: “wildberries”, by Aureliy Movila
Links:
• Source: Rutgers-RSL Makes its debut
• via: NJ.com
• Source Studies: PubMed-Polyphenol-rich Rutgers Scarlet Lettuce improves glucose metabolism and liver lipid accumulation in diet-induced obese C57BL/6 mice.
• PlosOne-Development and Phytochemical Characterization of High Polyphenol Red Lettuce with Anti-Diabetic Properties
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