Have you noticed? There’s a new generation of food products consuming grocery shelf space and probably eating up more room on your plate as well these days. The foods have bold labeling that often touts exotic ingredients more commonly found in the supplement aisles of natural food stores. They are mostly versions of the same old foods we’ve been eating for years but now have designer twists that add soy, glucosamine, ginseng, or any of hundreds of other ingredients that purport to have beneficial effects on human health. With these innovations, food and beverage makers are hoping to give their bottom line a healthy boost too! Welcome to the wonderful world of "functional foods" in which the guiding philosophy is that if they can dream it up, you will eat it.
Can nutritious natural foods be made better? Can they be made to pack more health-promoting punch? This is the promise that the makers of functional foods offer. It used to be that "natural foods" were simply, well, natural. Or as Webster’s defines it: "Existing in or produced by nature; not artificial." Those who shopped at natural food stores were after foodstuffs that approximated this idea —the reason being that natural foods were, intrinsically, whole and unadulterated. But a food revolution is taking place and it’s influencing what type of products will be offered by both natural and conventional grocery stores. Whether the functional foods movement will be a fleeting fad or a long-term trend is up to us as consumers; our buying power sets the pace for food makers.
Nowhere is this movement more evident than at Nutracon, a premiere functional foods conference attracting a unique mix of professionals that includes food and beverage manufacturers, research scientists, and health practitioners. The overriding thrust of this annual event is that if foods are nutritionally pumped up with herbs, vitamins, minerals, and other natural substances to meet specific health needs and made to be tasty, we’ll be convinced to buy them. Hence, you can see the vital importance of the relationship between food makers and the science wonks. For instance, let’s say a food company creates a juice drink with glucosamine as the essential ingredient, which is supposed to help those suffering from joint pain. It’s imperative that scientists are in the picture to conduct research to ensure that the glucosamine doesn’t deteriorate when added to the other drink ingredients and is bioavailable, that is, useful to the body in this form.
In addition, health practitioners, such as physicians and nutritionists, make a valuable contribution in the process. They attend Nutracon lecture sessions to understand the latest science behind why and how natural substances such as glucosamine aid in healing the body. They then are able to communicate this information to their patients. The patients, of course, are consumers who, in turn, may opt for a food product with the recommended ingredient to help their condition. This is beneficial in two ways: first, consumers receive the supplement via a food source and, second, they employ a natural approach to healing — potentially avoiding the use of pharmaceuticals and their attendant side effects.
Nutracon is a barometer of the direction in which food makers want to take us. The participants attend this conference to study all the angles to ensure that we will respond in a positive way to functional foods. Roaming the aisles of the Nutracon exhibit hall and attending the educational sessions last July in San Diego, I was amazed at the breadth of companies getting into the functional foods act. The knowledge that health-conscious baby boomers are clamoring for nutritionally enhanced designer foods has increasing numbers of companies expanding their product lines or stimulating the creation of completely new companies. As an example, take Virginia Dare, a flavor manufacturer out of Brooklyn. According to Maureen Dragonchuck, a chemist heading up business development, this mainstream company exhibited at Nutracon to sell flavorings to mask the icky taste of good-for-you ingredients. "Soy protein tends to be bitter and green," she explains. "It’s very healthy; something that’s very good for you. Things like hemp and flax...all those things are very good for you but they don’t taste good. So in our industry we’ve developed a line of masking flavors to mask the off notes [bad tastes] that are in vitamins, minerals, and many proteins."
Then there’s Egg Innovations, a Wisconsin-based company that contracts with farmers to raise four different groups of chickens to market four different types of eggs! Owner Cathy Brunnquell calls it niche marketing. "We have something for everybody." She says, "For the organic people we have an organic egg. For animal rights people we have a cage-free egg. For vegetarians we have a vegetarian egg where there’s no animal by-products in the feed. And then for the health-conscious we have the omega-3 eggs." My preference would be to see the company contract to have all of its eggs come from laying chickens that live in an organic, cage-free environment and are fed omega-3 enriched feed. But the economic reality is that there are not enough people yet who will pay for what would be a most environmentally sound functional food.
I have mixed emotions about this food revolution. Touring Nutracon showed me that food companies may be more concerned with the bottom line than they are in what comprises healthy food choices. There are numerous beverages, energy bars, cereals, and other functional foods that contain active ingredients shown to benefit health and well-being. But the redeeming value often appears to end with that one single ingredient. Many of these foods are like any other junk food that I would wag a finger at — loaded with sugar, additives, preservatives, and partially hydrogenated fats — perhaps outweighing the potential benefit of the healthful ingredient.
My immediate question is why can’t we simply eat "clean," whole foods? The sad reality is that we can but most of us don’t. Market strategists who spoke at Nutracon cited research that 70 percent of Americans say they usually eat pretty much whatever they want without regard to healthfulness. What’s more, research shows that consumers don’t want to hear what they shouldn’t eat. They want "positive eating" messages that reinforce proactive steps they can take to care for themselves. It appears the market is responding to these desires. And, when you look at the facts, it’s pretty hard to mount an effective argument against functional foods.
The functional foods movement is in its infancy. In many ways, the industry is running before it’s learned to crawl. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t officially recognize these products. Moreover, functional food makers have been criticized for making claims about health benefits of functional foods without strong science to back up those claims. It’s a complex issue because once a single health-promoting ingredient, for example, ginseng, is added to a food, its effects could radically change. Does it make the ginseng more effective? Less effective? Toxic? Or simply a waste of our money? Industry leaders are attempting to move the industry into the toddler stage by asking it to regulate itself. Many speakers at the Nutracon conference — luminaries in the functional foods industry — encouraged their colleagues to design functional food products only when there’s solid scientific evidence to show that the "magic" ingredient used will actually give the boost to health that the product claims it will.
So my take is that functional foods — those honestly created with our health in mind — certainly have a place in our lives. I’m the first to admit that it’s difficult to get "three squares a day" with a full complement of vegetables and fruits. Hence, as you know (if you’re one of my readers) I’m a proponent of sensible nutritional supplementation. Even though the industry has to grow up, well chosen functional food products might very well give us an extra edge toward optimal health. My positive (and repetitive!) message is: Do yourself a favor and become an avid reader of ingredient labels to make the smart choices. Make functional foods work for you.
Disclaimer: This column is for information only and no part of its contents should be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, recommendation or endorsement by Ms. Ephraim.
Rebecca Ephraim is a registered dietitian, certified clinical nutritionist and a nutrition reporter specializing in integrative medicine issues.
© Rebecca Ephraim. All rights reserved.