Functional Foods - Worthwhile or Worthless
September 22nd, 2008 Posted by David Lemberg
Superfood or Monster from the Deep – featured in the 9-17-08 New York Times – focused on the expanding practice of stuffing food products with every conceivable type of nutritional-wanna-be chemical.
Photography by Haani Badeeu
What these manufacturers – including Kraft, Dannon, and General Mills – have failed to recognize is that context is everything. It’s not the blueberry extract–antioxidant that packs the punch. It’s the blueberry.
It’s not the health food store–purchased pill crammed with carrot-derived beta-carotene that delivers the goods. It’s the carrot.
As Dr. David Kessler, former commissioner of the FDA says, “Whether a tomato is good for you, that’s one thing. Whether the lycopene in a tomato is good for you, that’s another. Whether synthetic lycopene and micro-encapsulated lycopene are also good for you, that’s yet another thing.”
The entire product line of “nutritionally enhanced foods” is way off base. A blindfolded man grabs hold of an elephant’s tail and thinks he’s holding a snake. Any actions he takes based on this dangerous assumption are bound to get him in serious trouble. Medical investigations are exactly analogous, and many examples of serious trouble have ensued.
Right now, geneticists and genome researchers are making this same mistake. Scientists are having enormous difficulties in trying to identify individual genes that are related to specific diseases. The stumbling blocks have to do with faulty assumptions.
Bottom line – Foods are good for you, not the isolated biochemicals they contain. The entire food provides the benefit – the active ingredients need a supporting architecture in which to be active. Antioxidants have tremendous value, including real anti-aging benefits and anti-inflammatory effects which help reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease and stroke.
The take-away – We want to eat a consistently balanced diet which includes several portions of fruit and vegetables every day. Yes, this takes some effort. And, yes, we’ll be much healthier as a result.
