Beyond Fortification

I have always been so weirded out by "functional foods", like when they add something, like a vitamin etc, to something that doesn't have that to begin with. The first thing that comes to my mind is Vitamin water. Tasty but come on. It has so much sugar and why do they even need to fortify water. And I'm sure it sells great because it is advertised as such a helpful and panacea-esque.

I had no idea there was so much controversy surrounding oat bran. It seems like it is obviously healthy because of the fiber and it's interesting that they needed another health claim, but heart disease is so rampant it makes sense to attach on to that movement. The information about psyllium was also really interesting. I had no idea that that movement in Kellogg even took place or that some people have reactions to that. It honestly made me laugh too when they were advertising metamucil as something that would decrease heart disease risk. Companies will do anything to try to make money on the lastest health craze.

The soy bean isolate idea also remind me of Pollan's book about whole foods not being a sum of their nutrients. The fact that Asian's eat soy does not mean if you take out the protein that someone in America will be healthier. It's more than that, its about a person's culture and relationship with food as well, not just the nutrient components of the food that they eat.

Overall, these companies obsessions with functional, techno foods is just really amusing to me. Especially the Heinz ketchup as a health food, reminds me of french fries being considered a vegetable. Also, I believe the emphasis on removing fat from the diet is horribly misinformed and many studies also show no effect of saturated fat on increasing heart disease risk. But if there is one study out that that isn't horrible that finds an effect, the food industry will jump on that and ignore the whole body of evidence.