By a guy who eats cereal standing up over the sink So there I am in the "healthy" aisle, squinting at a jar of something called "activated" almonds, which apparently means someone yelled at them until they woke up.
Right next to it, a bag of "ancient grains" — quinoa, amaranth, and whatever else was sitting in a tomb when the pyramids went up.
Here's the thing nobody wants to admit: we didn't discover health food.
We rediscovered the stuff our grandparents ate because they were broke.
Now it's eight bucks a bunch and some guy in Lululemon is putting it in a smoothie that tastes like a lawnmower's diary.
A "superfood" is just any plant that hasn't been marketed to death yet.
Remember when pomegranate was the chosen one?
Then celery juice, which is water with extra steps and a $9 price tag.
The second a food gets the super prefix, the price triples and somebody on TikTok starts drinking it out of a mason jar at 6 a.m. like it's a religious ceremony.
And the labels. "All natural" means nothing.
So is poison ivy. "Gluten-free" on a bag of almonds is like "water-free" on a bottle of water — congratulations, you avoided a thing that was never in there.
Meanwhile "organic" just means the pesticide had a nicer childhood.
Let's talk about the actual food for a second.
A rotisserie chicken from Costco that feeds four people and your dog.
It's been the whole list for a hundred years.
Nobody's making a viral video about the humble bag of frozen peas because you can't slap a lifestyle brand on a vegetable that costs ninety-nine cents.
The wellness industry figured out that health is boring and fear sells.
So now everything is a "toxin" and your liver — an organ that has been filtering garbage since the dawn of mammals — apparently needs a $40 tea to do its one job.
Here's my deeply unsexy take, and I'll say it loud: the healthiest food in America is the stuff that's been sitting there the whole time, quietly, without a PR team.
The sad little carrot at the bottom of the fridge drawer that you forgot about and now looks like a bent finger.
It's just going to make you feel like you did something, which is the entire product.
You're buying the feeling of being the kind of person who buys nutrition.
Somebody has to fund the next superfood's rebrand.
Final Thoughts
Just don't act surprised when the "ancient" grain of 2027 turns out to be regular old barley with a better Instagram.