Functional foods: health on demand – Magazine ?

Only 8% of French people are obese, compared to more than 30% of Americans: can you imagine why? The answer to this and other dietary enigmas has given rise to a new field in food research and production for the benefit of our health.

For the past decade, food scientists and technologists have studied a strange phenomenon, known as the “French paradox”: the French eat all the butter, cream and pastries they want, including dishes such as goose pâté, duck preserved in its fat, cheeses – there is one for each day of the year -, couscous with lamb meat, the traditional cassoulet from the south (a bean broth with sausages and lamb or pork), and I don’t know how many other delicacies, and despite this they have a low incidence of coronary artery disease. (When these arteries are blocked with fat and cholesterol, heart attack can occur, one of the main causes of death in the first world, particularly in the United States). According to experts in physiology and nutrition, the factor in the French diet that counteracts the harmful effects of so much fat of animal origin is wine. And so it is, it has been shown that moderate consumption of wine has positive effects on the health of men and women, young, old and even cigarette smokers. Gypsies.

My friend Don Eulalio says that more than with the wine, the effect has to do with the almost genetic capacity of the French to know how to enjoy their food and to stop two or three times a day to meditate, alone or accompanied, in front of their sacred foods, often prepared by themselves and leaving stress for later. He also says that the same paradox is experienced in his town, only that there instead of duck there is turkey, instead of snails, escamoles and instead of wine, pulque or mezcal. Of course, there the dose of alcohol is much higher than that recommended by scholars of the French paradox (five to 10 ml of alcohol per day), so the statistics are also low in heart attacks, but high in accidents in the surrounding area. of the canteens. What Don Eulalio ignores is that epidemiological data demonstrate that the beneficial effect of consuming wine, particularly red wine, is significantly greater than that of other drinks such as beer or martinis, because otherwise, English, Scottish or American people would not they would have a problem and there would be no paradox. In fact, there is evidence that the beneficial effects of red wine on the health of the French people cannot be explained solely by alcohol, but are due to a wide range of chemicals produced by plants called phytochemicals. An example is the compounds present in grapes, which maintain the health of our arteries and help prevent various forms of cancer by deactivating the components that cause it.

Phytochemicals everywhere

The French paradox confirms that old premise that establishes that food constitutes the most important medicine, because in health matters, as in many others, “prevention is better than regret.” Just as washing your hands before eating is much more effective against diarrhea than Lomotil and antibiotics, a healthy diet, that is, a balanced diet, is more effective in the long term than the best of medications. At the same time, this knowledge and the preventive effect that phytochemicals discovered in a large number of foods can have, have given rise to new trends in food science and technology. Naturists recommend the consumption of these fresh foods in the first instance, according to their preventive or curative properties. The industry, for its part, has started a new branch, that of functional foods. Although when it comes to definitions, everyone understands what they want, according to the last November issue of the magazine Food Technology Functional foods are those to which a nutraceuticalthat is, a substance that is nutritional and pharmaceutical.

The list of nutraceuticals would be very extensive, since there are phytochemicals beneficial to health in practically all vegetables. To them we must add certain proteins, fiber, some fats, also a large number of bacteria that we group within the term probioticsbacteria that are indeed “pro-life” as their name indicates and, finally, substances that promote the establishment of probiotics in the digestive tract, called prebiotics.

Functional foods are a way in which the industry tries to extend the benefits of natural, nutritious and health-promoting foods to processed foods, although now also “convenient”, that is, in accordance with current trends, that not only enter the traditional distribution chain, but can also be distributed in an automatic machine and consumed in the car, bus or desk, given the impossibility or inability of modern man to stop for a couple of hours, let alone to go hunting or fishing, but at least go to the market, prepare and enjoy your food. Unless you feel French.

What hurts us

I do not think it is necessary to insist on the vital nature of another of our main and fundamental foods: oxygen. To paraphrase David Suzuki, an active Canadian science communicator, in our next breaths, yours and mine, we will taste some of the oxygen that was in the breaths, sighs, sneezes, screams and whispered prayers of the historical and prehistoric past. All cells in our body depend on oxygen to release most of the chemical energy available in food through oxidation. However, normal oxygen metabolism also involves the inevitable production of free radicals., Very highly reactive molecules that oxidize the substances in the cells themselves (proteins and fats, among others, and of course the genetic material), which is associated with the deterioration and aging of our body. Free radicals are the environmental equivalent of the gases that result from the incomplete combustion of gasoline in automobile engines.

But, on the other hand, our cells use the oxidation process to combat bacteria and other invaders, using a whole arsenal of powerful oxidants that they themselves produce. The problem is that these weapons are not selective at all and when they are produced in excess they get out of control. Precisely this imbalance in the oxidative balance is one of the factors that contributes to the development of an important group of inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and various bacterial or viral infections; heart attacks and other ischemic diseases, many neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s, and finally cancer and AIDS. To counteract oxidative damage at the cellular level, the body must use substances that play the role, as their name indicates, of antioxidants, and that must be reinforced by those we ingest with food. Vitamin E, vitamin C, alpha and beta-carotene are substances that our species has been consuming since its origins to avoid oxidation. To these we must add (it is now known) a growing list of discovered phytochemicals, mainly flavonoids.

Flavonoids are compounds very similar to each other in chemical structure, which participate in the color of foods, and of which more than 4,000 have been identified, among them those of grapes, involved in the aforementioned French paradox, or those of the chocolate, in what we could call “the Aztec paradox” (see box).

The business of functional foods

No one escapes the obvious relationship in general terms between a healthy and varied diet and good health. Nor the way in which treatments or remedies for diseases based on specific diets have proliferated. Furthermore, thanks to globalization and free trade, we now have fruits, vegetables, fermented products, herbs, spices, etc., that were previously inaccessible or of limited consumption. Juice stands have also become pharmacies, where we can go to treat specific disorders: excess cholesterol, with a juice containing orange and cactus, constipation with papaya and plum, nerves with melon and lettuce, skin with cucumber and parsley, and I don’t know how many other formulations for the same and many other conditions. Wow, even Korean tea ginsengwhich supposedly cures all ills, “energizes” and “revitalizes” is available in any neighborhood market.

But as the reader may already suspect, this phytochemical thing has also opened up businesses of much larger dimensions. As a consequence of the advance in this knowledge, products have been generated based on natural food extracts, generally in the form of capsules, which seek to increase the potency of their active ingredients, that is, the phytochemicals responsible for the associated health benefit. with food. This is the case of extracts or concentrates of garlic, onion, nopal, broccoli, spirulina algae, root of ginseng, black tea, soy, alfalfa, and here a long etcetera, which the reader can continue on their next visit to a health food store or even supermarkets. But you have to be careful. Although, for example, the substance has been identified that makes populations that regularly consume soy in their diet have a lower propensity for cancer associated with…