SubscribeFoods: Functional, Franken or Fraudulent?
If someone from 50 years ago were to travel through time to the present day, they wouldn't recognize most of the foods in our modern-day grocery stores. We've been busy tweaking our foods to comply with the whims, trends and science of the moment and in the process, we didn't notice the deterioration of our collective health. With much of our health "knowledge" coming from market-driven big-food companies, the difference between "functional", "Franken" and fraudulent foods has become blurry.
I'm going to try and offer some tips on how to differentiate and give some examples of each (based largely on opinion - I'm open to suggestions as always).
Modified Foods Defined
Functional Food: any fresh or processed food claimed to have a health-promoting and/or disease-preventing property beyond the basic nutritional function of supplying nutrients (thank you Wikipedia!). For the purpose of this post, I've excluded natural functional foods.
Franken Food: Foods that have taken the original context out of the original food by adding/subtracting an ingredient/ingredients that are either prominent and/or healthy. (My own working definition - I'm open to suggestions!). For the purpose of this post, I'm excluding genetically modified foods from this argument (that's another post for another day!)
Fraudulent Food: These are foods that make health claims but are really processed junk with something trendy added. The formula? Take a junk food (pop, chocolate, candy, sugary cereal), add some vitamins, minerals or whole grains and sell it as health food.
Here are some examples of the 3 types of modified foods
FUNCTIONAL
- Protein powder
- Omega-3 eggs (I say this with hesitation as there isn't much in most fortified eggs)
- Probiotic enhanced yogurt
- Fortified cereals (vitamins and minerals)
- High protein/high fiber pasta
- A mixed greens supplement (such as Greens +)
In some cases, you can have what has been termed an inverse-functional food, whereby something is taken away to the avert allergies. Examples are;
- Gluten-free products
- Lactose free milk
FRANKEN
- Low fat just about anything (especially peanut butter and ice cream)
- Low carb just about anything
- Anything with too many preservatives and otherwise unpronounceable ingredients
FRAUDULENT
- Whole grains added to Lucky Charms and Count Chocula
- Vitamin water
- Fruit drinks with added Ginko, Ginseng, Echinacea, etc.
Some products are also on the fence. Margarine is one example. I know the trend now is towards butter (I get it - you trust the cow, not the lab) but I think margarine has transformed from being the prototypical example of Frankenfood to a fairly decent replacement of butter. Margarine's ingredients aren't so bad and some are even made with olive oil.
What to Do?
For starters, the best functional foods are the natural phytochemical-containing gems we call fruits and vegetables.
Add some legumes, seeds, nuts, tea, whole grains in addition to your good fats and protein and you have the recipe for a super-awesome functional food-filled diet.
Add some modified functional foods as needed/desired and try and steer clear of the "modified-beyond-resembling-real-food" stuff as much as possible. Oh yeah and save your money by not buying the candy-disguised-as-health-food stuff.
This topic is confusing enough to send our hypothetical time-traveler bee-lining towards the Delorean back to the 50's. Grocery shopping was much simpler then.
Diet Coke has added vitamins now. This bothers me. Diet Coke is the one seriously unhealthy chemical processed thing I consume. How dare they pretend they can make it good for me!
ReplyThanks for this article. People need to know the difference between real and fake health food.
I have recently started taking a Greens supplement.
ReplyIf a food requires fortification (see whole grains), it is obviously not a good source of nutrition for a human. The fact that it requires having vitamins added to provide solid nutrition (which is debatable in the case of grains anyway) is PROOF that it's a subpar food. Further, yogurt shouldn't need to be "probiotic enhanced". If it's made properly, it already contains live cultures.
And no, margarine is not a good replacement for butter. Even if it's made with olive oil. Butter is cream and salt. Margarine contains an ingredient list that requires a PhD to decipher. Real food doesn't contain such a list. In fact, if people just ate real food rather than fortified-this and vitamin-enhanced-that, there'd be no need for all of these crappy products. Too bad most people are too lazy.
Cheers
ReplyScott Kustes
Modern Forager
Definitely. If you can find it in nature or make it yourself from natural ingredients...you're doing pretty well already. Then it comes down to what is okay and what is ideal. Like the difference between a pastry made with whole grain flour and honey (okay, not the best for you) and a salad of fresh ingredients (ideal).
ReplyFood companies..oh how you deceive us. It amazes me to see people eating "diet" franken food and think they are so healthy..healthier then just eating natural foods. Now I am no angel sometimes I have my serving of a "processed food" but they are limited.
Scott- Well said! Most people are too lazy ...or just mis-informed.
ReplyMargarine is one example. I know the trend now is towards butter (I get it - you trust the cow, not the lab) but I think margarine has transformed from being the prototypical example of Frankenfood to a fairly decent replacement of butter. Margarine's ingredients aren't so bad and some are even made with olive oil.
Extra-virgin olive oil on it's own is superior...margarine, of any kind, is franken food IMO.
ReplyI don't disagree... by my very definition of frankenfood, margarine seems to fit in nicely. I have to clarify that I am not suggesting people SHOULD replace butter with margarine - only that I don't think it's necessarily bad either. I guess it's all relative too. Margarine made with trans-fats are a true abomination, but now that they've removed them, I don't think they are that all that bad.
Like anything, we have to look at the entire context of the diet and IMO, the butter vs. margarine issue isn't a terribly important one.
ReplyA few points:
(1) Not all functional foods are bad. The use of iodized salt has resulted in huge decline in iodione deficiency, which can cause goiters and mental retardation in children. The fortification of milk with vitamin D has reduced the incidence of rickets and other conditions associated with a vitamin d definciency. The fortification of breads and cereals with folic acid has resulted in a sharp decline in neural tube defects in infants.
(2) Lactose free milk is designed for those who are lactose intolerant (unable to digest lactose), not those who have a milk allergy (allergic reaction to casein and/or whey). Milk allergies are relatively rare in adults, whereas the large majority of the world adult population is unable to digest lactose. Lactose tolerance is a relatively recent occurrence in human history that resulted from gene mutations in certain population groups (primarily in Northern Europe) that stops the shutdown of lactase production (the enzyme that digests lactose).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance
ReplyAnd yet the question remains, what did people do pre-civilization when there was certainly no fortification? Is it possible that the introduction of subpar foods, like grains, necessitates the addition of vitamins and minerals like iodine, folic acid, etc? Is it possible that if people would stop being scared of the sun, there'd be no need for vitamin D added to milk? What about getting vitamins A&D from real, healthful foods like liver rather than in a synthetic form from a processed food like pasteurized milk?
Bottom line: Humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years before the introduction of grains and then another 8-10K years before the introduction of fortification. It wasn't until that introduction of grains that all of these nasty diseases like rickets, pellagra, and beriberi reared up.
Cheers
ReplyScott Kustes
Modern Forager
Before the fortification of foods, I'm sure that lactose-intolerant people simply avoided dairy products altogether. And people who didn't live near the ocean to eat seafood probably didn't get enough iodine in their diets and developed goiters. The creation of lactose-free dairy products is a way for lactose-intolerant people to enjoy dairy products like everyone else.
ReplyThe only reason there are so many people with a lactose intolerance today is because of the pasteurization process which is done only to preserve the milk for shelf life. This process takes away precious enzymes and proteins needed to digest the milk. 40 years ago when milk was only delivered to your door fresh every morning from the farm, there was no milk or dairy intolerance. All foods today are not in their natural form because they have to be processed and added with stuff to last longer on the shelves. It's all about the food industry making money and they don't care about your health. I have been researching nutrition for awhile now and I am no longer buying food from publicly traded companies as there all about profit. We need to take back our health and refuse to help them get rich at our expense.
ReplySimply not true. 75% of the world's adult population is lactose intolerance. It results from the fact that the ability to produce lactase (the enzyme that digests lactose) begins to shut down in most humans from beginning around 4 into adolescence and early adulthood. A genetic mutation has allowed some population groups to continue producing lactase - these groups mostly originated in Northern Europe and Northern Africa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance
ReplyNot to mention that the term "lactose intolerant" has only really become relevant in the last 50 years or so since medical research has discovered the enzyme lactase and the fact that some people don't produce it. I'm sure, like blah said, that a LOT of people are lactose intolerant; they just didn't know they were before the discovery of lactase. People who were lactose intolerant back in the day probably just figured that milk/dairy gave them the runs so they avoided eating it.
ReplyI might also point out that 100 years ago, the use of dairy at all was quite limited. If you or your neighbor had a cow, you might get some milk. There was no mass production or mass consumption of milk. Because cow's milk is designed for, well, cows, our bodies have a hard time digesting it - whatever the reason.
ReplyWe have a much higher life expectancy of these prior generations who did not make use of these fortified/frankenfoods etc- I don't know that the "natural food" answer is the cure all. As the population gets older, diseases seem to become more prevalent-- perhaps this is due to the fact that more people are living to be 90 and as bodies deteriorate, they become more vulnerable to illness.
Now I am not claiming to have an answer, I am just suggesting that your logic is an oversimplification of the situation. Whole foods and organics could play a role in increased overall health but we are clearly doing something right if our life expectancy has not gone down since the introduction of such products in the mass market.
ReplyOur life expectancy hasn't gone down because we ate healthy early in life. We had a good start. Our children on the other hand don't have a good start as it is now that our food is full of crap. You only have to look at all of the food alergies and childhood diseases that plague our children today. When I grew up in the 60's and 70's, all school children lived on peanut butter and jam. There was no such thing as a peanut alergy or lactose intolerance for that matter. Also, I never heard of Autism either which is now considered at an epidemic rate.
ReplyIn response to "Our life expectancy hasn't gone down because we ate healthy early in life. We had a good start. Our children on the other hand don't have a good start as it is now that our food is full of crap. You only have to look at all of the food alergies and childhood diseases that plague our children today. When I grew up in the 60's and 70's, all school children lived on peanut butter and jam. There was no such thing as a peanut alergy or lactose intolerance for that matter. Also, I never heard of Autism either which is now considered at an epidemic rate."-
Ok- so although we have different chronic illnesses than they did in the 50's, you speak of no evidence to imply that we have a lower life expectancy. Are the kids you speak of dropping dead at 30 bc they lived on velveeta and captain crunch? All I am saying is, we don't know the answers--
If at 50, an entire generation starts dropping like flies, then it may be the time to say "this American diet is killing people".
There are so many other factors involved that just limiting your argument to the unproven food argument is a little tunnel vision. For all we know, autism and peanut allergies can come from air or water pollution or EMF's emitted by cell phones.
I reiterate, I do not claim to have an answer- I just object to people oversimplifying "good vs. bad" when the cause/effect hasn't clearly been defined (and people haven't been dying off as an effect).
ReplyIt's a fallacy that our ancestors didn't live long enough to acquire our diseases. In fact, I wrote about this quite some time ago here. The fact of the matter is that "average life expectancy" was far lower because of high infant mortality rates. In fact, at the turn of the century our life expectancy was only 47. Look around you...people aren't healthier. What we have today is better sanitation to eliminate the killing bugs and better medical treatment such that a knife/gun attack in most any populous area can be treated rather than automatically being a death sentence.
Hunter-gatherer tribes are known to have quite a few elderly, with few of them suffering from the diseases of civilization. Dr. Loren Cordain has shown that on age-matched subjects, you can look at people eating a traditional, "proper for humans" diet, rather than a grain-laden one, and see differences in health. One doesn't acquire cancer overnight...bodily health manifests in the bones for many years before anything overt is apparent.
Basically, we're living longer, but we're more susceptible to diseases such as cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and other illnesses that do not affect people eating a proper diet and living a natural life.
ReplyI am a little confused about your comments regarding grains. Your arguments up to this point have been in regard to the detriments of manufactured or scientifically enhanced foods. How is this related to grain which is a grown crop (which we have access to organic versions in this country)?
In regard to the study you cited, I would be very interested in seeing a copy of the study, particularly for what measures were being used and how large a sample size was being tested. Like how many people from the urbanized world were tested- who were these people- what were their habits-- what exactly were they testing for-- for how long did they observe these people- what percentages of these tribes matched or exceeded our life expectancy-- that kind of stuff...
As I said before, I don't doubt that simple food is good for the body but I have yet to read any scientifically compelling arguments on this board to support it.
So yeah- are there any links to studies you have read (the actual study, not a summary) so I can get a better idea about the science behind the argument?
ReplyMany thanks.
Cod liver oil is an excellent source of Vitamins A & D.
ReplyCouldn't agree more. Scott's right, the best foods don't NEED any fortification or enhancement.
As to Vitamin Coke, have you read the label? It's got about 25% of your daily niacin. Does that really warrant a celebration and a new label?
Pomegranate is another culprit. It's a buzz word in the health community right now, but most "pomegranate" sports drinks are still 98% water, corn syrup, and citric acid.
I would actually argue that many fraudulent health foods are actually more detrimental than plain old coca-cola and candy bars because they trick the consumer into believing they are improving the health of the body, where in fact they are just piling on excess calories and sugar. You'd think twice before putting down a Butterfinger with your morning eggs, but you've got no problem eating a "nutrigrain" breakfast bar (i.e. relabeled fig newton).
Mark's Daily Apple has a great list of more of these fraudulent health foods in his junk foods in disguise post.
ReplyBlah - good points! Iodine is probably the first example of fortification - I think it started in the '20's.
ReplyI also have to agree that not all fortification is bad...most fortified foods started off innocently enough to combat real health problems that people had at the time. Lots of kids had rickets back in the day, so it was a real breakthrough when vitamin D was able to be added to milk to help kids get enough of it to prevent rickets. To a certain extent, I think food manufacturers are still sort of trying to do that: a common complaint of a lot of people is constipation, so food companies are making fiber-enriched foods to help alleviate that. Problem is, if people would just eat REAL sources of fiber, they wouldn't have the constipation in the first place.
ReplyThanks for taking the time to help distinguish these. I am not a huge fan of candy or soda where the manufacturer has added something like vitamins, so they can claim that it is healthy. In my mind they are not really trying to help anyone, but just exploit people, and I'm not sure of the validity of their health claims.
ReplyI try to avoid anything that my great grandparents wouldn't recognize and I DEFINITELY avoid anything my grandma doesn't recognize! This means I usually buy things like oatmeal or grits (boxed cereals are generally too expensive for me to buy them often), meats, eggs, skim milk, fruits, vegetables, etc. I think the only thing I really buy that I'd call a frankenfood is my nondairy fat free French vanilla coffee creamer. I probably should use half and half, but for some reason it tastes weird to me.
It never ceases to amaze me just how many modified/fake foods that are out there in the supermarkets these days. Various meal replacement bars, yogurt with fiber in it, sugar free/low fat ice creams, etc. South Beach and Weight Watchers have their own lines of diet foods that are basically overprocessed, overpriced frankenfoods. Why do we pay MORE to get food with less nutritional value? IMHO, I'd rather buy a container of real ice cream and eat only a little of it rather than a container of fake ice cream that costs twice as much and tastes like foam.
ReplySpot on man. The problem is there is such an abundance of fraudulent fods and not enough functional. And in the desperation to lose body fat, people fall for the fraudulent stuff!!
ReplyA healthy diet base on natural food is the way to go
This is one of my pet peeves, so I'm going to try and keep it short, for everyone's sake. It seems that these days so many people don't eat food any more; they eat a mixture of sugar and additives with a little cardboard thrown in for extra measure. We can only guess what it is doing to us. I’m not talking about the foods geared towards combating real medical conditions and allergies of course. Your right, the food industry has changed so much that it is almost unrecognisable; and the manufactures seem to put much greater importance on what they can write in a big starburst on the packaging than they do on what the material inside the packaging will do to people. The western world is starving to death and getting fat at the same time. The irony is stomach-turning.
ReplyGreat article! Lots of interesting comments here...some that draw flawed conclusions but there is no point in pointing them out such as life expectancy and the assumption that 'we' (if you mean worldwide) are living longer and the lifespan was (worldwide) less generations ago. Many countries statistics show an average high age reached until western foods were introduced.
Fact: N. American lifespan has been progressively getting lower in the past few generations. It is now around 73 or so.
Margarine: is hydrogenated vegetable fat with a LOT of additives. Never was good for you. Was invented for economical reasons.
Butter: is just cream...outside of N. America salt is an option to choose as the norm is 'sweet butter' which means no added salt (tastes wonderful). People used to sprinkle a little salt on it if they wanted.
Reply