POWER UP YOUR DIET WITH THESE 10 SUMMER SUPERFOODS

Superfoods to improve your mood

Eat more walnuts + asparagus

Give your mood a spring clean by adding walnuts and asparagus to your diet. Walnuts are packed with tryptophan, an amino acid your body needs to create the feel-great chemical serotonin. Plus, given that they are slow to digest, they help stabilise your mood and tolerate stress better. What about asparagus? Feast on these little spears of goodness while their crop is plentiful during springtime. Asparagus is one of the best veggie sources of folate, a B vitamin that could help keep you out of a slump thanks to its role in synthesising the neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine.

Superfoods to help you lose weight

Eat more spring garlic + legumes

The slimming secret in spring garlic lies in a compound called allicin, which gives garlic its pungent smell. It’s thought that allicin helps stop you from overeating by stimulating satiety in the brain.

Beans are one of your best bets if you're trying to lose weight, for two good reasons. First, your body uses up energy to digest the bean and get to the fibre. Plus, packed with protein, legumes you feel full.

Superfoods to give you more energy

Eat more spinach + artichokes

Spinach is a great source of iron (especially if you don't eat meat), which is important in fuelling our muscles with oxygen for energy. It also contains compounds that increase the efficiency of our mitochondria, the energy-producing factories inside our cells. No wonder Popeye ate so much of the stuff.

Artichokes are another great energy-boosting vegetable. They're loaded with magnesium, a mineral vital for more than 300 biochemical reactions in the body – including generating energy. Given that many people are magnesium-deficient, adding some artichokes to your diet could be a great pick-me-up.

Superfoods for a glowing skin

Eat more salmon + strawberries

Salmon is rich in a fatty acid called eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), a type of omega-3 that naturally helps you hold onto collagen, which reduces the appearance of lines and sagging skin. As a bonus, omega-3s also regulate oil production in the skin and boost hydration.

Strawberries are loaded with antioxidants to help your skin repair the damage caused by environmental factors like pollution and UV rays. Plus, they're packed with vitamin C. Whether you eat them or mix up a fresh strawberry-flavoured facial, you’ll get the benefit.

Superfoods to boost your memory

Eat more eggs + blueberries

If you can’t remember the foods good for your mood at the top of this article, then you need more eggs in your life! Egg yolks contain choline, a key nutrient for recall and storing memories.

Or, you could eat more blueberries. In a recent study, people with age-related memory decline who drank roughly two and a half cups of blueberry juice per day for 12 weeks (the equivalent of eating a cup of blueberries) made significant improvements on memory and learning tests compared with those who drank a placebo juice. The secret component? A type of antioxidant called anthocyanins, found naturally in blueberries.