Page 28 - Food&Drink magazine April-May 2023

FUNCTIONAL FOODS
Naturally nutritious, with function
Nearly 40 years after “functional food” was first coined our understanding of nutrition in health has increased immensely. Dr Anneline Padayachee looks at its origins through to today.
also classified as “functional foods” too.
The most famous example being margarines infused with plant sterols with the aim of lowering cholesterol. Unilever is credited with developing the first plant sterol spreads specifically for patients with high blood cholesterol levels in the 1960s.
In consultation with medical researchers and nutritional scientists, the first formulations were based on understanding specific nutrient mechanisms of action in the body (e.g. plant sterols on cholesterol metabolism).
Overtime, these spreads have become available to the general public, showing that medical science, nutritional science, and food science can join forces to create products with specific health functions.
A NEW ERA
Given that nutrition science is only about 220 years old, our understanding of nutrients and the food matrix (i.e. the architectural structure) is growing immensely. We know it is not enough for a food to contain nutrient X, at amount Y anymore.
Rather, we are moving into an era where it is also essential to know if that nutrient is both bioaccessible (i.e. released from the food matrix and ready to be absorbed) and bioavailable (i.e. has been absorbed and able to be used by the body).
Functional foods of the future will need more accuracy behind claims as our understanding of nutrition and the factors that affect release (bioaccessibility) and uptake (bioavailability) increases.
As we know better, we have to do better. In one sense, this may seem somewhat complex and
FROM bullet trains to anime Japan has a long history of innovation and inventions. In food science, Kikunae Ikeda identifying umami as a separate taste in 1908, and Momofuku Ando inventing instant noodles in 1958, are just two examples of this.
From a country of inventors, it’s no surprise that it was the Japanese who first coined the term “functional food” in the late 1980s. They developed the world’s first food policy that legally approved “functional food” as “Food for Specific Health Use” (FoSHU).
According to the FoSHU legislation, foods that claim to have a specific health use must provide strict scientific evidence on the product’s effectiveness and safety with regards to its particular functional health claims, including bone health, gut health promotion, reducing blood glucose levels, and decreasing cholesterol levels.
In truth the concept “foods for specific health use” spans all eras
of history and is found in every culture, with Chinese and Indian Ayurvedic medicine being among the oldest in the world.
WESTERN FUNCTION
In the Western world, the oldest “functional food” is probably Coca-Cola. John S Pemberton, a pharmacist in Atlanta USA, created the non-sweetened, non-carbonated Pemberton’s French Wine Coca tonic in 1866, to provide himself morphine- free pain relief from a severe chest wound he’d sustained during the Battle of Columbus.
He used cocoa, coca wines and kola nuts to create his tonic as these ingredients contained active ingredients (including cocaine) that appeared to relieve pain. Atlanta’s anti- alcohol laws caused Pemberton to join forces with another pharmacist, Willis E Venable, to create a non-alcoholic version.
Purely by accident, they came up with carbonated water version, and with the
help of sugar, were able to sell it as a drink (instead of a tonic) that could cure headaches, alleviate nervousness and decrease tiredness.
No one today considers Coca-Cola, or any sugary carbonated drink to have specific health benefits. And yet Coca-Cola, the godfather of sugary carbonated drinks, actually started off as a medicine turned functional drink for specific health use.
While the Coca-Cola story seems far-fetched today, it is
an example lived out across “functional foods” in supermarkets globally, where formulations are fixated on one health imparting component without taking the entirety of all ingredients.
WHAT IS FUNCTION?
Functional foods are not just foods for specific health usage. With our understanding of nutrition, health impact and functional outcomes increasing, foods with nutrient function are
28 | Food&Drink business | April/May 2023 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au