Meet the Scientists
Phytochemicals may protect
the body against certain diseases and
promote good health.
tion due to the presence of certain chemical compounds. You’ve heard the terms: Antioxidants. Phytochemicals. And you know how scientific research has uncovered functionality —
beneficial health effects — in some unlikely foods that once were considered bad for you.
We mean chocolate, especially dark chocolate. And red wine. And coffee. Some people
even term these foods “nutraceuticals” because their effects do seem to mimic those of
actual pharmaceuticals, or medicines. Developing these new foods will have major benefits,
as Dr. Newell-McGloughlin notes:
“The focus on modification of foods to improve the nutritional and functionality characteristics I think will help to alleviate the large medical costs that occur in the U.S.”
Barbara Shukitt-Hale, Ph. D.
Casimir Funk Coins a Word
We have long known that food contains certain chemicals that we must eat in order stay
healthy. In 1911, Polish-born chemist Casimir Funk, working in a lab in the United States,
coined the familiar word used to describe these important components of food. Funk called
them “vitamins.” Funk combined the word “amine” — that’s an organic compound derived
from ammonia — with “vita,” the Latin word for “life.”
And over the next few decades, 10 scientists won Nobel Prizes in recognition of their pioneering work discovering and studying vitamins. Diseases such as beriberi, pellagra, scurvy,
and rickets are rare or unknown in most developed countries thanks to the discovery of
vitamins. So, too, are the nutritional deficiencies that used to be the major causes of blindness and anemia. Indeed, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers
conquering these ailments by improving the nutritional quality of food as one of the 10 great
public health achievements of the 20th century.
Richard Weindruch, Ph.D.
From Vitamins to Bioactives
Food scientists and others are now focusing on a relatively new cornucopia of chemicals
produced by plants and often called phytochemicals. Phytochemicals may help protect the
body against certain diseases and promote good health. These chemicals go by names such
as lutein and lycopene, resveratrol and sulfurophane, polyphenols and triterpenoids, Α-3-
omegas and β-glucans.
Elizabeth Jeffery, a nutritional scientist at the University of Illinois in Urbana–Champaign,
favors the term “bioactives” for these exciting chemicals:
“The reason that I call them bioactives is that we have an idea about nutrients. Nutrients
are compounds in our diet that we specifically need to help build the normal components of our bodies and to give us energy. The compounds that I study are bioactive,
that is to say, our body will survive without them, but they’re like gentle probes causing
our physiology to work better.”
Navindra Seeram, Ph.D.
Among the particular bioactives that Dr. Jeffery studies is a particularly potent chemical
called sulfurophane. Scientists’ research suggests that this compound has almost magical
effects in reducing the risk of certain types of cancer, including prostate cancer and colon
cancer. Dr. Jeffery’s work has shown that among other effects, sulfurophane boosts the
body’s ability to detoxify and excrete a wide range of substances that can cause cancer. And
recent data reported in the ACS’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry by Dr. Dipak
Das, of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, suggests that sulfurophanes foster
changes in the body that could protect us from cardiovascular disease.
