Providing Nutritious Foods
HIGHLIGHTS
ite into that chocolate. Make it a butter crisp. A maple walnut cluster. An orange
cream. Or maybe chocolate toffee. Then savor the decadence as that luscious
silky morsel melts into a mouthful’s rush of pure pleasure. Years ago, that gratifi-
cation was why people ate. Food also provided the calories for people to work, and filled the
belly to drive away hunger pangs.
And that was pretty much the extent of it. A full stomach still remains a dream for billions
of people today, especially in developing countries. The World Health Organization has
estimated that one-third of the world is starving and one third underfed. For the other third
— the well-fed and the overfed — food has taken on a new cache. Increasingly, people in
industrialized countries are selecting food not just for taste and sustenance, but also for its
potential effects in promoting good health.
◆ Scientists are developing “functional
foods” that provide
medical or health
benefits beyond basic
nutrition.
“I think people are beginning to focus more on food as a source of optimizing health and
preventing disease rather than just providing the basic nutrients to just survive. I think
as we go forward there’s going to be a greater focus on the notion of functionality of food,
and optimizing not just its nutritional capability but its ability to protect us against some
of the debilitating diseases that are a real focus of Western medicine at the moment.”
◆ Certain fruits and
vegetables contain
large amounts of
“phytochemicals”
— plant chemicals
— that seem responsible for the healthful
effects.
Foods with Function
That was Martina Newell-McGloughlin, director of the University of California’s Biotechnology Research and Education Program. She was talking about a renewed emphasis among
chemists, nutritional scientists, and plant biotechnologists to better understand how the
foods we eat can protect us against some of our most serious health problems. Cancer. Heart
disease. Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes.
Be sure to remember one sound bite from her comments. The “functionality” of food.
“Functional foods” are foods that may provide medical or health benefits beyond basic nutri-
◆ One potent phytochemical is sulfurophane, found in broccoli, Brussels sprouts,
cauliflower, and
cabbage. It seems to
have special effects in
reducing risks of certain kinds of cancer.
DiD YOU KNOW?
Diet is derived from the Greek word diaita, which means “way of life”.
Worldwide agriculture production boomed in the 20th century after development
of the Haber–Bosch process for producing large amounts of inexpensive nitrogen
fertilizer.
Proteins, not sugars, are the world’s sweetest substances. One protein, thaumatin,
isolated from the African Serendipity Berry, may be the world’s sweetest substance.
Ounce for ounce, this protein is almost 3,000 times sweeter than table sugar.
Herbalists have used rosemary for centuries for stomach upsets and other ailments.
Modern food scientists are repurposing that aromatic evergreen with rosemary
extracts in “active” packaging material that preserves food. The darker the color of a
fruit or vegetable, the more nutrients it usually contains.
A diet loaded with white bread, chips, sugars, and other rapidly absorbed
carbohydrates is linked to age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of
blindness in older Americans.
A diet low in animal fat and high in ber, fruits, vegetables, and grain products can
reduce the risk of many forms of cancers, according to the National Cancer Institute.
◆ The color of health?
Scientific discoveries indicate that it is
bright, with bright-colored foods like
blueberries, deep
green vegetables,
tomatoes, and purple
grapes containing
the most healthy
substances.
◆ A material made from
oat and barley hulls
shows promise as a
fat substitute that
may reduce the calorie content of many
processed foods.
