071233 Functional Foods In Diet Can Improve Health

Good health is of utmost importance to most of us.

The news and television are always touting a food that can impact your health. You can actually have some control of your health just by including certain foods in your diet. These foods are referred to as “functional foods”. Functional foods can be defined as foods that contain components that provide health benefits beyond basic nutrition. These foods might be traditional foods like fruits, vegetables and whole grains or a new food product specifically developed with beneficial components, like yogurt with probiotics.

These foods or beverages may enhance your health, protect you from certain diseases, or do both. With functional nutrition, what you do eat, not what you don’t eat, makes the difference!

Popular Part Of Diet

Functional foods have been around for a long time. Technically, all foods, in one way or another, are functional and provide health benefits.

According to a Natural Marketing Institute survey, currently two-thirds of Americans surveyed consume functional or fortified products. This consumption is spread evenly across all age groups.

Consumer demand for functional foods is at an all-time high due to rising health care costs, changes in food labeling laws affecting health claims, increases in our aging population and renewed interest in attaining wellness through diet.

Credible scientific research indicates there are many clinically demonstrated and potential health benefits from food components. These benefits continue to expand the health claims now permitted to be identified by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Functional Food Types

Functional foods are grouped into several categories.

The first group is the unmodified whole foods such as oats, carrots, tomatoes, grapes, blueberries, nuts, beans, salmon and yogurt with live active cultures. These naturally contain the compounds that provide health benefits.

The next group is modified foods, which are specifically formulated to have higher amounts of nutrients or phytochemicals than would naturally occur in that food. These include high-fiber cereals, calcium-fortified orange juice, vegetable juice with added lutein, flour with added folic acid, and beverages with more vitamin E.

There have even been new foods created for functional and other benefits such as shakes and snack foods with soy protein, omega-3 and flaxseed food bars and spreads with plant stanol or sterol esters that help lower blood cholesterol.

Foods have also been produced through biotechnology for functional benefits such as tomatoes with more lycopene, or rice with added beta carotene and iron.

Examples

Here are a few examples of functional foods and their health benefits:

* Fruits, vegetables and grain products contain phytonutrients, or plant substances (carotenoids, flavonoids, isoflavones, or indoles) that may reduce the risk for certain diseases including prostate cancer, heart disease, and macular degeneration.

* Oats. Strong scientific evidence supports the belief that oats help lower cholesterol levels.

* Prebiotics/probiotics such as fructo-oligosaccharides in shallots and lactobacillus in some dairy foods may improve the balance of “good” intestinal bacteria.

* Omega-3 fatty acids found in fatty fish may lower the risk for heart disease and improve mental performance.

* Soy protein in many soy-based foods may help lower cholesterol levels.

* Dairy foods and some meat (beef and lamb) have a fatty acid called conjugated linoleic acid which may help lower a person’s risk for cancer.

* Calcium-rich foods such as dairy foods may help protect people from high blood pressure and colon cancer.

These are just a few functional foods. There are many more.

Credible research shows that functional foods can play a role in wellness when combined with balanced food choices and plenty of physical activity. Maybe you already consume some functional foods or will decide to include some in your diet today!

Source: A Family Living Focus column by Nancy Routch, R.D., LDN, of the family and consumer sciences program offered by Penn State Cooperative Extension.

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