Nature's Elixr
Something has happened to food. Stores are dotted with omega-3-enriched eggs, dairy products and juice. On commercials, women gyrate in orgasmic pleasure while eating probiotic yogurt. Newspaper lifestyle articles and scientific studies tell us green tea may help prevent breast cancer, while whole-grain foods may reduce the risk of heart disease.
“Functional foods” — foods that have health-promoting properties beyond their basic nutritional makeup — can be whole foods, such as cholesterol-lowering beans, or dietary components, such as flavonoids (found in berries and chocolate). And they’re big business. According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, functional food industry revenues grew 15 per cent between 2002 and 2004 to $2.9 billion.
Food manufacturers would have us believe functional foods are nature’s elixir, capable of delivering a range of health benefits — from alleviating menopause symptoms to warding off Alzheimer's. What’s real and what’s marketing mumbo-jumbo?
Health Canada regulates what manufacturers can claim on packaged foods and in advertising. For example, “May reduce the risk” of heart disease is allowed on certain products that are low in saturated and trans fats and high in fibre. Stating a food will help prevent breast cancer or boost the immune system, however, is not allowed. Those are the rules as they apply to packaging on the shelves; cyberspace is a different story.
The need for educated consumers
Manufacturer websites tout all kinds of health benefits. A site for a Yogen Früz probiotic frozen yogurt states, among other things, that probiotics can reduce the risk of colon cancer, allowing the consumer to leap to the conclusion that its frozen yogurt could do the same. Gregor Reid, a professor of microbiology at the University of Western Ontario finds this sort of advertising “misleading” and “inappropriate.”
The onus is on us to be educated consumers. Ann McConkey, a dietitian in Winnipeg, says there are many reliable web sites, such as Dietitians of Canada (dietitians.ca) and the Canadian Women’s Health Network (cwhn.ca), that have good information and links to other reputable sites. “The media present so many studies that it’s hard to make good choices,” she says. “On these sites, someone has done the research and summarizes it in a way that’s understandable.” You can also look at scientific studies first-hand on such sites as the U.S. National Library of Medicine's PubMed, though you have to know what you are looking for. “I don’t care about the thousands of studies on the health of rats in the labs of North America,” says Bruce Holub, professor emeritus of nutritional sciences at the University of Guelph (Ont.). “Show me the peer-reviewed human studies: That’s all I care about in terms of delivering information to the public.”
So what are these functional food components? More asked nutritional experts for a primer on four components — psyllium, probiotics, omega-3 fatty acids and soy isoflavones — to better understand what we are being asked to put in our bodies.
Psyllium
What is it? Psyllium is a plant with the highest amount of soluble fibre found in nature. We need two types of fibre in our daily diet — soluble and insoluble. Insoluble fibre, in foods such as wheat bran and fruit skins, speeds up digestion, bulks up stool and helps keep us regular. Soluble fibre, from psyllium, oats, legumes, fruits and vegetables, dissolves in water and becomes gel-like, softening stool and slowing down digestion and the release of carbohydrate energy, which stabilizes blood sugar levels and helps you feel full longer.
Where is it found? Two cereals of the few in Canada enriched with psyllium are Kellogg’s All-Bran Buds and All-Bran Guardian. It’s also the dissolvable powder in the fibre supplement Metamucil.
The claim: When Regis Philbin announces on a commercial for psyllium-enhanced Guardian cereal that a bowl a day will lower cholesterol 10 per cent in four weeks, should we believe him? Yes, says Doug Cook, a dietitian at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. “If you have high cholesterol you should be eating at least 10 grams of soluble fibre a day. You get 3.5 grams in a serving of cereal with psyllium, and that’s more than you get in three apples.”
Soluble fibre has been shown to lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the “bad cholesterol” that can lead to heart disease. Louise Lambert-Lagacé, a Montreal clinical dietitian and author of Good Nutrition for a Healthy Menopause, has seen “marvelous” results among her middle-aged female patients in lowering LDL with powdered psyllium. That’s in addition to the benefit that both soluble and insoluble fibre offer in fighting constipation, a bogeyman of midlife, when our gastrointestinal motility starts to slow down.
Should we be concerned that, to make them more palatable, psyllium-enriched cereals have a higher sugar content than other high-fibre brands? Guardian’s 10 grams of sugar in a one-cup serving is hefty compared to four grams in Bran Flakes. But since most people don’t get enough fibre in their diets, Lambert-Lagacé feels the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.
The bottom line: Go for it! Bust out your breakfast bowl. “It’s not going to be harmful, and may be helpful,” says McConkey.
