With seasonal colds and various types of flu threatening your family’s health, fortifying your family’s diet with extra immune system boosting nutrients is just one more way to ward off illness. Forget the boring, bitter-tasting pills and powders — here are 10 tasty immunity-upping products to keep your family healthy during the cold and flu season, as well as throughout year.
Amazing Grass Berry Green SuperFood
This delicious drink mix from the nutrition convenience pioneer Amazing Grass offers the antioxidant equivalent of seven servings of fruits and vegetables and every amino acid, vitamin and mineral necessary for optimal body functioning. Berry Green SuperFood is made with organic acai, a great source of healthy omega fats, fiber and protein. Berry Green SuperFood has a robust berry flavor and is gluten-free, soy-free, vegan, low in calories and fat, and has no added sugar. Start your day with a scoop in your smoothie or shake it up in your water bottle to sip as a refreshing drink throughout the afternoon.
Availability: Berry Green SuperFood is available at retail stores around the country. Visit www.AmazingGrass.com to find a location near you or to order online.
Retail: $27.99 for 8.5-ounce tub (30 servings); $21.99 for 15-count box of individual packets
Amazing Grass Wild Berry Kidz SuperFood Mix
Getting the kids to eat their fruits and vegetables is a daily challenge for many parents. To ensure your kids are at least getting adequate antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, the Amazing Grass Kidz SuperFood Berry Drink Powder combines a rainbow of 32 phyto-nutritious fruits and vegetables with the delicious flavor of yumberry. This drinkable immune system helper is made with 70 percent organic ingredients, which are vegan and free of artificial colors, flavors, fillers, gluten, dairy, soy and GMO. Stir a scoop into your kids’ juice, water or smoothie. They also come in convenient packages you can slip into a lunch box or backpack.
Availability: Amazing Grass Kidz SuperFood is available at stores around the country. To find a retail location near you or to order online, visit www.AmazingGrass.com.
Retail: $24.99 for 8.5-ounce tub; $21.99 for a 15-count box of single-serving packets
Evolve Kefir
When a product tastes as delicious as Evolve Kefir, the latest addition to the Mountainside Farms and ZenSoy family of products, keeping your family’s immune systems in peak shape is an easy endeavor. Evolve Kefir has captured all the health benefits of a traditional kefir — promoting digestive health and enhancing the immune system. New Evolve Kefir is the first kefir to carry the claim that it helps promote digestive health and enhance the immune system and is the only kefir to contain a string of bacteria clinically tested to prevent colds and help fight the flu. Choose from plain, strawberry, peach, blueberry and pomegranate flavors.
Availability: Major supermarkets and health food stores. To find a location near you, visit www.EvolveKefir.com.
Retail: 3.79 for 32-ounce bottle
Hero Nutritionals Yummi Bears
Kids and adults alike find gummi candies irresistible. Hero Nutritionals, known as the innovator of the beloved “gummi vitamins” offers Yummi Bears, a multi-vitamin and multi-mineral. The yummi gummies are made with natural strawberry, orange, pineapple and grape flavors and contain no artificial flavors or colors, allergens, gluten or casein. Containing 16 essential vitamins and minerals, a daily dose of Yummi Bears will provide your children with building blocks necessary for optimal growth and development as well as nutrients that promote a high-functioning immune system. For the kid in you, Hero Nutritionals also has an adult-friendly gummi vitamin called Slice of Life that comes in six different flavors.
Availability: Health food stores around the country or online at www.YummiBears.com
Retail: $13.99 for 90-yummi bear bottle
Emergen-C Kidz
An adult favorite for fighting off colds and flu, Emergen-C now has a line of complete multi-vitamin drink mixes formulated especially for children. Each serving offers 24 essential nutrients, choline, 500 milligrams of vitamin C, beta carotene, vitamin E, zinc, calcium, iron, antioxidants and more. The three flavors — Orange Pineapple Explosion, Strawnanaberry Blast and Cherry Yumberry — are so fizzy and tasty that kids won’t even know they are loaded with immune system boosting nutrients. Stir a packet into your kids’ juice, water bottle or smoothie.
Availability: Supermarkets, pharmacies, health food stores and online supplement and health food retailers. Visit www.EmergenC.com for more information.
Retail: $14.99 for a 30-packet box
Emergen-C Immune Defense
To ward off colds and flu at work or from the germs your kids bring home from school, a daily dose of Emergen-C Immune Defense will boost your immunity with 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C, key B vitamins, a full day’s supply of cold-combating zinc, selenium, vitamins A and D, hibiscus and elderberry extracts. Because this convenient drink mix is flavored with honey and lemon, you may even want to stir it into your warm cup of morning or afternoon tea.
Availability: Supermarkets, pharmacies, health food stores and online supplement and health food retailers. Visit www.EmergenC.com for more information.
Retail: $14.99 for a 30-packet box
Biotta Organic Juice
Made with 100 percent pure organic fruits and vegetables, Biotta’s three immune system boosting juices — Elderberry, Beet and Vegetable Juice Cocktail — are bursting with intense flavor and the highest value of nutrients. The Biotta Elderberry Juice is rich in minerals, aids in relieving inflamed and blocked respiratory passages, helps regenerate the cilia in the respiratory passages, and assists in relieving cold and flu symptoms.
Biotta’s Beet Juice offers high levels of anti-carcinogens, carotenoids, folic acid, and betacyanin, a phytonutrient that strengthens the body’s own defenses and helps maintain cell function and immune system function.
The Vegetable Cocktail Juice is ripe with organically-derived immunity-upping nutrients from carrots, beets, celeriac, and tomatoes. Biotta has a total of 11 organic juices, all of which are considered functional juices in that each targets a specific health issue.
Availability: Health food stores around the country. Visit www.BiottaInc.com to find a location near you and to learn more about these tasty health-boosting beverages.
Retail: $4.99 for 8.4-ounce bottle; $7.49 for 16.9-ounce bottle
AgroLabs Acai Immune Booster Supplement
Liquid supplements are growing in popularity among those who don’t want to swallow a pill as well as parents who need a sneaky way to get their kids to take their vitamins. The AgroLabs’ Acai Immune Booster is a fruit-flavored liquid supplement featuring the antioxidant-rich acai berry and a blend of other immunity-upping ingredients, including echinacea and elderberry extract. One shot provides 100 percent of the DV for vitamin C, vitamins B2 and B12 along with selenium, vitamin D, zinc, 19 amino acids, and omegas 3, 6, and 9. Drink it straight or add it to yogurt, smoothies or juice.
Availability: Costco or online at www.VitaFac.com
Retail: $21.99 for 33-ounce bottle (26 servings)
Maqui Superberry liquid supplement
You’ve heard of acai, but have you heard of maqui? This new superfruit, which has two to three times more antioxidant power than acai, pomegranate, goji berry or mangosteen, is a deeply purpled berry from the Patagonia region of South America traditionally used by the Mapuche Indians for supporting stamina, increasing strength, and promoting a strong immune system. Novelle’s Maqui Superberry is a delicious organic fruit-flavored supplement, lightly sweetened with agave, that provides a high level of polyphenols and anthocyanins from the maqui and extracts of elderberry, blackberry and raspberry. A shot of Maqui Superberry can help support the immune system and cardiovascular health, protect cells from oxidative stress and reduce inflammation. Try it with your morning breakfast!
Availability: The Vitamin Shoppe, GNC and other health stores nationwide or order online at www.NovelleInternational.com
Retail: $39.95 for 16-ounce bottle (26 servings)
Chicago Healers Tonic
Already in the beginning throes of a cold or flu? A natural remedy that you can add to your current cold- and flu-fighting regimen, this Scallion and Ginger Tonic can help you beat the sniffles, sneezes and coughs. No need to go to the supplement aisle; you can make this immune system aid at home.
Scallion and Ginger Tonic: Combine 1 bunch of chopped scallions, 6 coin size slivers of fresh ginger, Shoyu (quality soy sauce) and 4 cups of water in a sauce pan and bring to boil. Lower to a simmer and reduce by half so you are left with two cups.
Dr Steve Arculeo of Chicago Healers recommends drinking both cups while they are steaming hot, soaking in a very warm bath and then going to bed wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants. The wholistic expert says, “I have used this successfully with many patients over the years. You will break a sweat during the night and wake up feeling much better.”
More health-boosting tips to improve your immune system
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- 8 Tips to avoid colds and flu
- Flu fighting foods
- Immune boosting recipes
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