Proper diet and nutrition is half the battle in creating better health and in building the body of your dreams. The benefits of a healthy diet and good nutrition are immense. Add these super foods to your daily meals. You'll have more energy, lose weight, feel better, and perform better.

7 of the Best Foods You Can Eat - Super Food Sources

These seven superfoods pack a powerful punch for your health and fitness goals. They will help you build the lean, strong body you desire. Beyond that, they may save your life in the long run.

While there are certainly other healthy foods out there (such as green tea), we kept our list to food sources that are fairly common. Eat these foods on a regular basis, and you will dramatically lower your chances of a host of diseases.

Salmon – The amazing benefits of eating salmon are very extensive and are almost hard to believe. We've created a separate page on all the benefits of salmon. Read more about the benefits of salmon here.

Broccoli – You didn’t like it as a kid, and odds are you don’t like it as an adult. But, broccoli contains unique health-promoting sulfur-containing compounds and a wealth of vitamins, minerals and dietary fiber.

Try this tip for making broccoli more eatable - break the head of the broccoli into very small pieces and sprinkle it over pasta (with pasta sauce) and chicken with sauce. It will help drown out the taste for those of us who don’t like broccoli.

Spinach – Popeye was well ahead of his time. Spinach has at least 13 different flavonoid compounds that function as antioxidants and as anti-cancer agents. In addition, spinach helps build strong bones, protects your eyesight, and may help protect your brain from decline.

The nutrients in spinach will give you cardiovascular protection.

Apples – The health benefits of apples are plentiful.

Apples can reduce cholesterol levels, thereby lowering your risk of hardening of the arteries, heart attack, and stroke. In recent studies, eating two large apples a day has lowered cholesterol levels by up to 16 percent.

Apples can reduce your risk of cancer, heart disease, asthma, and type 2 diabetes. Apples can also help you lose weight.

Eating an apple a day may offer significant protection against breast cancer. Apples may also help prevent menopausal bone loss, and help protect against postmenopausal breast cancer.

The old saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” has a lot of truth to it.

Blueberries – Research studies show that blueberries not only improve cognitive function and delay neurological decline, but also protect delicate brain structures against oxidative damage.

Blueberries may even reverse age-related deficits in cognitive and motor function.

Oatmeal (unprocessed) – While oatmeal does not rank as high as some other foods on this list, we included it because we want to sell you on the idea of eating oatmeal for breakfast.

We highly recommend eating a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast in the morning. It is one of the best foods you can eat in the morning. It will provide you with much needed energy and give you long-term health benefits.

Oatmeal is a great source of carbohydrates. Oatmeal will help reduce your cholesterol and lower your risk of heart disease. Oats and (and other whole grains) substantially lower your type II diabetes risk.

Slow down in the morning and eat a bowl of unprocessed oatmeal. If you eat oatmeal for breakfast instead of grabbing a donut or pastry on the run, you will go a long way toward increasing your energy, losing weight, and feeling better.

And substitute oatmeal for that high fat, traditional breakfast such as bacon and fried eggs or ham and fried eggs. These high fat breakfasts will only give you long-range cardiovascular problems.

Almonds – Almonds can lower LDL-Cholesterol and reduce your risk of heart disease. This is possible because almonds are high in monounsaturated fats, the same type of health-promoting fats as are found in olive oil, which have been associated with reduced risk of heart disease.

Almonds have also been shown to protect against diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Some additional benefits of almonds – they can give you more energy and the healthy oils in almonds may help you lose weight (along with other healthy nuts).

Avoid salted almonds. Go for the unsalted, unprocessed almonds found at many grocery stores.

Try eating a handful of almonds in place of your late night snack.

Almonds are delicious cut and sprinkled on salads.

While we’re on the subject of nuts, we’re going to add walnuts to our list.

Like seafood and flaxseed, walnuts contain omega-3 fatty acids, which help protect your heart and preserve brain health.

Walnuts can significantly increase blood levels of the health-protective omega-3 essential fatty acids, alpha linolenic acid (ALA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). Eating walnuts regularly will improve your cardiovascular health. Walnuts also have been shown to help with high blood pressure AND improve cognitive function.

Some additional comments:

Eat these lean protein sources on a regular basis (we eat them daily), rather than consuming so much read meat:

Baked (or microwaved) Chicken – Substituting baked or microwaved chicken breasts for red meat will help save you from heart disease.

Turkey—Another great substitute for red meat.

Related Nutrition Health Articles:

Quick Weight Loss Tips that Give you the Body You Want
Use these proven weight loss tips to help you shed those unwanted pounds. Add regular exercise, and you’ll build a lean, mean machine.

The No Carb Diet / Low Carb Diet Myth
Our bodies need carbohydrates. But not all carbs are created equal. There’s good carbs and there’s bad carbs. Read about how to create meal plans that will help you lose weight.

Benefits of Salmon
This food source will help give you a lean body, improve brain function, keep your heart healthy, improve your appearance, and even help with depression.

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