If you were lucky enough to grow up in a region where blueberries grew wild, you probably came home with purple teeth more than once. Polyphenols called anthocyanins are responsible for giving blueberries their namesake color, and they are the major contributors to blueberries’ antioxidant richness. Antioxidants help neutralize free radicals, which are unstable molecules linked to a number of conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and short-term memory loss associated with aging. According to the USDA database listing the antioxidant activity of foods, blueberries are the highest per serving of any food. That’s pretty good credentials for a superfood.

At just 84 calories per delicious cup, blueberries offer you 4 grams of fiber, making them a good source of that dietary need to help control hunger and maintain regularity. That cup of purple gems contains a quarter of your recommended daily Vitamin C, a quarter of your manganese, and a third of your Vitamin K. Blueberries contain virtually no saturated fat, cholesterol, or sodium, making them a wonderful snack or dessert.

Consumers can buy blueberries year round, with frozen berries always in stores and fresh berries widely available for many more months than previously, due to increased production south of our borders. Recipe ideas abound. Everybody loves blueberry pie, although that’s not the most nutritious way to get your dose of antioxidants. Blueberry muffins are healthier for you if you make your own from scratch than if you use a mix. My favorite way to eat blueberries is plopped on my cereal in the morning. Yum!

You can mix blueberries into yogurt for a taste sensation, and for extra goodness, freeze the berries first. It’s just like eating blueberry ice cream! An unconventional way to add blueberries to your diet is in a salad. Prepare your favorite mixed greens—lettuces, spinach, others—add diced green pepper, chopped celery, diced red apple, and a big handful of blueberries. It’s a salad your family will ask for again and again.

Oatmeal makes the superfood list primarily because of its soluble fiber. It has a high satiety factor, which means it helps keep you full longer. Eat a bowl of steaming oatmeal with a touch of brown sugar and a dash of cinnamon for breakfast and you probably won’t need that mid-morning snack. Half a cup of dry oatmeal (about 1 cup cooked) contains about 150 calories. While not rich in vitamins, it will provide about 20% of your daily fiber and 10% of your protein for the day, as well as about 10% each of thiamine, iron, zinc, and copper. This morning wake-me-up contains about 15% each of recommended magnesium, phosphorus, and selenium, and a whopping 75% of your manganese.

Ads like to say that one bowl of oat cereal a day can lower cholesterol, but the subjects in the study ate more than one bowl a day and they likely cut back on high-cholesterol foods by doing that. Oatmeal itself has no cholesterol and negligible sodium and saturated fat. Other whole grains have similar benefits, but oatmeal is tops, and it is an excellent grain choice for diabetics. Oatmeal has a lower glycemic load, meaning it has less impact on blood sugar levels than some other grains. Oatmeal also has an excellent amino acid profile.

You can add oatmeal to your diet in ways other than a bowlful each morning. Some options are more fun, albeit less healthy. Oatmeal raisin cookies are among the least evil of cookies (try reducing the sugar in the recipe by half), and fruit crisp can have a top and bottom crust made of oatmeal. Many multigrain breads and rolls have oats as a primary ingredient. Also consider having oatmeal as a snack at work. Although not quite as nutritious as steel cut or old-fashioned rolled oats cooked at home, the quick-to-fix packets remain a much better option than a bag of chips or a donut.

Flaxseed, specifically, ground flaxseed, is a healthy addition to anyone’s diet. It’s high in fiber and is a non-animal source of valuable Omega 3′s, which help lower LDL cholesterol. You can sprinkle ground flaxseed (whole flaxseed passes through the body virtually untouched, without releasing nutrients) on breakfast cereal or add it to muffins, cakes, or breads you bake yourself.

I suppose you could sprinkle it on most anything, from fresh fruit to yogurt to even vegetables, although it might be less appetizing on some foods than on others. The downside of flaxseed for us was the calorie count. Because it is such a rich source of Omega 3 oil, it has 150 calories in a quarter cup, about what you might add to a recipe. That’s 37 calories per tablespoon. If you sprinkle a tablespoon on your cereal every morning, that’s an extra 1000 calories a month. That was enough to scare me off.

But we still had most of a bag of ground flaxseed left, and I certainly wasn’t going to throw it away. I spent some time thinking about what I could add it to where it wouldn’t make the calorie count skyrocket. I finally hit upon the answer: add it to our soft margarine! I know that sounds strange, but for us, it’s the answer. I use about two or three tablespoons of flaxseed in a small, 8-oz. tub of margarine, although you could add more or less to suit your taste.

Think about it: margarine is already a fat, so the calories are the same (or less). And you add the benefit of extra fiber to the food. Most of our margarine is used for toast. We can barely see the flaxseed when we butter our toast, and on the rare occasion that we butter vegetables, such as a baked sweet potato, the flaxseed is not objectionable. It adds a little color and texture to the veggies.

So if you’re looking for a way to add flaxseed to your diet painlessly, consider adding it to your margarine.

Hot tomatoes are what you pick out of your garden in August, if you’re lucky. And hot tomatoes are just about the hottest and most popular vegetable out there, surpassed in consumption each year only by potatoes. Needless to say, tomatoes beat potatoes in nutrition by miles. Filled with vitamins A and C, tomatoes are high in dietary fiber and low in sodium, with no saturated fat or cholesterol. They are also a good source of vitamin K, vitamin E, thiamin, niacin, vitamin B6, folate, magnesium, phosphorus, copper, potassium, and manganese. Whew! Tomatoes are one of the best nutritional packages around and are commonly available to nearly everyone.

Tomatoes were first cultivated by the Maya centuries ago. A member of the nightshade family, tomatoes were long thought to be poisonous in Europe. It was not until the late 1700s that people began to accept it as the luscious fruit it is.

Think of all the different ways you eat tomatoes today. Start with sliced on your plate at a picnic on a hot summer day. Move to piled on a sandwich, then to wedges nestled around a salad, and then to hollowed out and stuffed full of tuna or crab salad on a restaurant plate. Tomatoes cubed into spicy chili. Tomatoes diced up tiny into tacos.

Then start thinking about tomato products. Ketchup, of course. Tomato sauce poured over meatloaf. Tomatoes chopped up with onions and cilantro into salsa for a burrito. Tomatoes simmered with oregano, basil, and garlic into rich goodness to top spaghetti. Tomatoes drowning with molasses and chili peppers in your favorite barbeque sauce. Tomato juice, tomato paste, sun-dried tomatoes, canned crushed tomatoes, Italian-style, Mexican-style, stewed. Is your mouth watering yet?

Producing tomatoes to fill all these needs is big business. Commercial farms in California grow tomatoes on acres of sun-drenched soil. Their harvesting machines can gather over a ton of tomatoes each minute, and the tomatoes are then sent to a processing plant that can handle over a million pounds of tomatoes every hour. Tomatoes from these farms are specially developed to ripen simultaneously, maximizing yield and efficiency in harvest. The fruits are fleshy, with small seed compartments and thick skins to withstand machine harvesting. The varieties grown here, with names like Heinz 2401, are resistant to viruses and fungi that plague home gardeners, as well as to nematodes and beetles. Corporate giants like Heinz, Campbell’s, Pizza Hut, and Ragu pay for the research that turns out these commercial crops, and they reap the rewards of the harvest.

At the other end of the spectrum lie heirloom tomatoes, with names like Brandywine, Marvel Stripe, and Green Zebra. To be classified as an heirloom, the seeds must have bred true for at least 40 years. Heirlooms have become increasingly popular in the last few years and they turn up in organic bistros as well as pricey fine-dining establishments. These varieties are not suitable for commercial production and are usually grown by individuals in small gardens. But individuals cannot supply the growing demand for these tasty reminders of days past, and organic farms, much smaller than the giant commercial operations and often family-operated, are beginning to offer a more reliable supply to restaurateurs and grocers.

The escalating demand for heirlooms is based mostly on flavor, although increasing awareness of pesticides, pollution, and Big Farming have swayed some converts. Consumers have grown tired of the “green baseballs” found on produce shelves these days and long for the flavor of real tomatoes, the kind their parents picked out of the family garden a generation ago. Heirloom varieties offer both flavor and a “greener” footprint.

Whether out of a can or from an organic garden, tomatoes hold a place–indeed, many places–in today’s menus and lifestyles. Lest we forget, the tomato is the basis of that lovely invention, the Bloody Mary.