Bionic Foods
Elizabeth Somer, M.A.,R.D.


Forget the pharmacy. Now you can boost brain power with chewing gum. Curb depression with potato chips. Lower heart-disease with salad dressing. Strengthen bones with orange juice. Even get your vegetables in candy. Welcome to functional foods, the latest trend to hit your supermarket. Here to help us sift fact from fiction is Elizabeth Somer, registered dietitian and author of The Food & Mood Cookbook.

1) What is a functional food?
A functional food is any food or food component that provides a health benefit beyond traditional nutrients it contains. Calcium-fortified orange juice qualifies is a functional food because calcium is not found naturally in this food, but calcium-rich yogurt doesn’t Other examples include:

• Kellogg’s Ensemble line of everything from potato chips to pasta entrees contains added soluble fiber (called psyllium) to lower heart disease.
  
• Beverages, such as R.W. Knudsen’s line of Simply Delicious drinks that contain herbs like gingko and echinacea, or SoBe Eros Drink with herbs that “enhance sex drive.”
  
• Snack bars, such as Clif packed with antioxidants, Balance Plus laced with gingko biloba, Think! Interactive with phosphatidylserine, and Golden Temple’s Vanilla Cashew chew with St. John’s Wort.
  
• Calcium-fortified food, from prune or orange juice to soda pop, pasta, and rice
  
• Foods with omega-3 fats, such as eggs, salad dressing, and spaghetti sauce.
  

2) It sounds like a great idea to get your calcium from soft drinks. Why should we be concerned about these new bionic foods?
Functional foods are as controversial as they are profitable. FDA has yet to impose guidelines on these new items, allowing manufacturers free-reign and few restrictions. The impressive health claims attached to these products also blur the line between food and medicine. Scientifically, herbs are drugs, so to add them to processed foods makes as much sense as adding aspirin to soup or diazepam to potato chips. On the other hand, some functional foods could improve your diet and health.

3) You say there are four (4) questions to ask when sifting hype from health in the realm of bionic or functional foods. What are they?

#1 Does It Do the Job?
A wealth of evidence supports adding calcium to orange juice to prevent bone loss or folic acid to grains to prevent birth defects. There’s also reason to find alternative sources of omega-3 fatty acids, fats shown to lower heart-disease risk but found primarily in seafood. But what about ginseng added to a fruit juice smoothie that then claims it will “jump start your day” or a snack bar with gingko promising to boost mental function? The research on many of the herbs added to functional foods is sketchy at best, and even then are only useful for people with serious health conditions. There’s no evidence that these herbs help healthy people with routine forgetfulness or fatigue.

#2 What Are You Getting?
Even if a functional food contains beneficial ingredients, does it supply enough to do the job? Foods fortified with vitamins and minerals, such as milk with vitamin D, must list amounts on the label. That’s not the case with phytochemicals or herbs. You don’t get a therapeutic dose of any herb in any product I’m aware of. Often we’re not told how much is in the food and even the manufacturer doesn’t know. No telling the form used (leaves, extract, stems?), if it is standardized, or how it was processed.

The same concerns go for phytochemicals, the thousands of non-nutrients in plants that lower our risk for disease and boost immunity. Even if stated, no one knows optimal doses for lycopene, the sulfur compounds from garlic, or any of the other 12,000 phytochemicals. Most people don’t know when an herbal dose is too much or too little. For example, Balance+ Food Bars with Ginkgo Biloba supply 20 milligrams of the herb. How many people snacking on this bar know that it would take six of them, for a total of 1,200 calories, to get an effective dose of the herb?

These companies counter by saying their products are meant to supplement a consumer’s regular supplements, not to supply an entire day’s requirement. But adding up the dosages from drinks, foods, and supplements makes it difficult to keep tract of how much you’re taking. To be on the safe side, avoid any product that doesn’t list how much of the herb or active ingredient is in each serving.

#3 Is It Safe?
Some experts argue that tinkering with uncharted food territories is blindly messing with a good thing. We know so little about optimal doses, interactions, or long-term consequences of most phytochemicals and herbs that to begin adding them haphazardly into foods could produce any number of potential toxic effects.

Beta carotene taught us the importance of whole foods over single components. For years, studies showed a diet high in beta carotene-rich foods reduced cancer risk. So supplement and food companies added this phytochemical to supplements and cereals. Subsequent studies using beta carotene supplements found that at best beta carotene had no effect and might even raise cancer risk in smokers.

When it comes to herbs, you shouldn’t take them lightly. Herbs are drugs and like other drugs, they can have side effects or can interact with other medications. St. John’s Wort should not be taken with anti-depressant drugs, kava kava might interact with anti-anxiety medications, and echinacea produces allergic reactions in some people.

It’s also a crapshoot whether or not you’ll know the functional food is harming your health. It’s relatively easy to identify harmful side effects from medications, but how will we make the connection between symptoms like heart palpitations or headaches and a varied diet that contains a functional food.

#4 It Glitters. Does That Mean It’s Gold?

We have an age-old belief that foods have medicinal properties, which explains why 9 out of 10 people believe that certain foods have health benefits beyond just basic nutrition. That must be the reason we’re willing to wolf down nutrient-fortified snack bars that taste like sweetened dog chow or herb-laced cereal with the texture of cardboard under the guise that they’re good for us.

You don’t see Mother Nature’s functional foods, like broccoli or strawberries, touted as mood boosters and energizers at the supermarket. It’s the processed items, in many cases gilded junk food, that are fortified with a handful of nutrients to create the false impression of a product that is somehow valuable.

For example,

• Like Kool Aid or Tang, the two main ingredients in most functional beverages are water and sugar, from SoBe drinks and Snapple’s Fire drink (with Ginseng, Guarana, and Ginkgo Biloba) to Proctor and Gamble’s Sunny Delight with Calcium.
  
• Rice Snackles Snack Bar from BodyLogic hypes its flaxseed, but the main ingredient is “marshmallow fluff.”
  
• V8 Splash claims to be carrot-based tropical drinks, yet only 25% is actual juice with the balance being water and high fructose corn syrup (alias sugar).
  
• Betty Crocker’s Lucky Charms Fruit Snacks say they’re “made with real fruit juice and 100% vitamin C” but 85% of their calories come from sugar. Plus they contain mineral oil, an oil that flushes fat-soluble vitamins out of the body.
  

Since when did sugar-laden products become health foods? Fortified or not, these products are not as nutritious as wholesome real food.
Then there are down right ridiculous products. For example,

• Manntech’s Phyto Bears and Hero Nutritional Products Yummi Bears, that are candy with a dusting of powdered vegetables.
  
• Roberts American Gourmet markets a line of herbal snacks, such as Ginkgo Biloba Rings that are air-popped potato-corn rings spray-dried with ginkgo and touted as “a memory snack.” There’s not likely enough of any herb in these products to do anything. It’s just a marketing gimmick.
  
  3) What about the cost of these new bionic foods?
  Most of these foods are spendy. So, if you have your heart set on taking St. John’s Wort, flaxseed, or some other health food, find out if there is a more economical way to get it. For example, Knudsen’s Simply Nutritious Ginkgo Alert costs more than $2 a day for the recommended herbal dose of 120 milligrams. You can buy Solaray Gingko Biloba supplements and get the same standardized dose for 51 cents a day. A Clif Bar supplies your daily vitamin C needs for about $1.00, but a glass of orange juice does the same thing for pennies.
  
  Functional foods have a few advantages, such as being easy to add to your diet without forgoing your favorite foods. Some even improve our health or reduce our risk for disease. But, functional foods are not the answer to dysfunctional diets, so don’t lose your incentive to drink orange juice or eat broccoli just because you got your vitamin C from a soft drink.
  
  They’re also not magic bullets. A truckload of Benecol won’t make up for a bad diet, smoking, or lack of exercise. At best, view these products as extras, while fruit, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and other wholesome foods will always remain the mainstays of a healthful diet.
  
  4) Are there any bionic foods worth trying?
  The following functional foods really deliver on their promise, are backed by solid research, and taste great!
  1) Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice with Calcium (and Vitamin C)
  Active Ingredient: One cup supplies 350 milligrams of calcium as calcium citrate malate, a very absorbable form of calcium.
  Claim:“As much calcium as milk”
  How Much Do You Need? Children and adults need between 1,000 and 1,300 milligrams of calcium daily from a variety of sources.
  Comments: Most people don’t get enough calcium, which places them at increased risk for osteoporosis. For those who can’t get enough of this bone-building mineral from milk, calcium-fortified OJ is a great alternative.
  
  2) Benecol and Take Control Margarines
  Active Ingredient: Sterols and stanol esters, extracts from pine tree bark
  Claim: “Helps promote healthy cholesterol levels”
  Dose: 1 packet of Benecol (contains 1.5 grams of plant stanol esters) three times daily or 1 to 2 tablespoons of Take Control.
  Comments: Stanol esters prevent body from absorbing dietary cholesterol and also help remove cholesterol from body, thus lowering blood cholesterol levels and potentially reducing heart-disease risk. Only useful when combined with a low-saturated fat, high-fiber diet and exercise. Benecol also comes as salad dressings; two tablespoons of full-fat Ranch dressing is equivalent to 1 packet of Benecol margarine.
  
  3) 8th Continent Soymilk
  Active ingredient: Fortified with calcium and vitamins A, B2, and D
  Dose: Three glasses supplies same amount of these nutrients as found in three glasses of milk.
  Comments: Fortified soymilk is the best alternative source of calcium and vitamin D for people who do not drink enough milk. The new low-calorie version cuts sugar and calories by almost half.
  
  4) Vitamin E and/or Omega-3-Rich Eggs (Eggstasy, EggsPlus, Eggland’s Best, Choice Eggs)
  Active Ingredient: The antioxidant vitamin E and/or omega-3 fatty acids
  Claim: “Excellent source of vitamin E”. No mention of omega-3s.
  Dose: One egg supplies 3 milligrams vitamin E, 200 to 350 milligrams omega-3 fatty acids (about half the recommended daily dose).
  Comments: Depending on the brand, contains 20% to 50% of the Daily Value for vitamin E, which means you still must take a supplement to reach the 100 to 400IU of vitamin E recognized to lower heart disease. However, these eggs provide an alternative to fish as a source of omega-3 fatty acids that might lower risk for numerous health problems, such as heart disease, cancer, and depression. Most companies feed hens only natural, all vegetarian diets.
  
  5) Viactiv Soft Calcium Chews
  Active ingredient: Calcium
  Claim: Active Nutrition for Women by Women
  Dose: Each chew packs in 500 milligrams of calcium (more than two Tums and the same amount as most other supplements) and 100IU of vitamin D, to aid in calcium absorption.
  Comments: Granted, each chew is sweetened with a teaspoon of sugar (as corn syrup) and they’re a bit pricey, but, this supplement tastes so good you’ll look forward to tomorrow’s dose. (Keep out of the reach of children, who might overdose on these tasty treats!)