The new term "functional food" has taken the fancy of the food producing corporations, although it is difficult to see that, as a basic necessity of life, food can be anything else than functional. The expression has been fittingly criticised by a food scientist in the Netherlands writing in the Lancet for September 4. It was coined to suggest that specially developed foodstuffs might be used to protect consumers from a variety of diseases and discomforts rather than for their primary function of providing energy and materials for building body tissues. Specially designed foods would be aimed at encouraging distinct body functions which ensure health and strength.
Among factors promoting such an idea is the desire of food-producing corporations to widen their profit margins by appealing to an increasingly affluent body of consumers who are highly conscious of health issues. At the same time, the restrictions applied to dietary supplements as distinct from basic foods might be circumvented by incorporating these supplements into food items.
There is now little interest in the older dietary supplements such as bran and unsaturated fatty acids as safeguards against illness, but much in the newly promoted ingredients which might be patented to safeguard the interests of their producers.
There are new margarines with added plant sterols and antioxidants designed to reduce cardiovascular diseases. Unfortunately progress is not clear. Beta-carotene, for example, sometimes has been found to promote rather than inhibit lung cancer in smokers, and the coronary protective effect of tocopherols has not been firmly established. There are considerable doubts over the effects of the B vitamins on cardiovascular disease, and over the optimal doses of them. Research into nutrition is rather neglected by universities, although improved techniques to determine the effects of various food supplements on the progress of disease may now be less costly than in the past.
There is a strong temptation to market supplemented foods without rigorous testing, on the strength of rather dubious and unverified health claims. It is obvious that strong rules, backed by legislation, are highly desirable to control the rash development and marketing of so-called "functional foods" in the interests of consumer safety, something we now find all too often compromised in the commercial and political world.