Functional Food

@Silvia Bürkle @HQ Metabolic Balance

Functional Food: when food does more than satisfy your appetite

“Functional food” – the origins of these fortified foodstuffs lie in Japan. There is no generally recognized and binding definition of it in the United States. The basic definition of functional foods are those that may have health benefits beyond their nutritional value, such as chips with added probiotics or protein. But food designers and advertising strategists take great pains to present these products as especially valuable for nutrition and health, and all the more so since no scientific proof of their health-boosting effect is required.

Can you buy health in the supermarket?

The idea is that it’s all very easy and that functional food can make our lives simpler and healthier. The aim is to have consumers believe that it is not enough to have food that “only” tastes good. No – today, food must also contain a helping of health, well-being and convenience. There’s the yogurt that saves you the trouble of exercising after a meal, the cheese that speeds up sluggish intestinal flora and even juices that help boost the tired modern consumer’s immune system. And the best thing of all, you can get all of that in the supermarket for a bargain price. Health off the shelf! So why make the effort of eating a balanced diet or giving up bad habits if there is a supposedly simpler way?

Gain without the pain

Modern designer food is all too keen to kill two flies with one stone – to satisfy people while making them healthy at the same time. Unfortunately, what may seem to be a noteworthy approach is totally counterproductive in actual practice. The uncontrolled consumption of functional food cannot be justified with the facile message of “the more the better”. We need to be quite clear about this: Our need for nutrients, vitamins, minerals and so on is fully covered by a balanced, varied diet. The recipes of functional foods, on the other hand, are a real potpourri of food supplements that indeed, at first glance, give the layperson the feeling that they are doing something positive for their health. Vitamins, minerals, bacterial cultures, unsaturated fatty acids, indigestible carbohydrates – everything that exudes “health” in the eyes of the food designers are mixed together with traditional foodstuffs that are supposedly “upgraded” with appropriate advertising slogans to the status of functional food. Many scientists and nutrition experts have argued that functional foods do not overcorrect for eating an improper or imbalanced diet.

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