It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s … superfood!
A few days after laboring over my very first post, and I encounter this article about superfoods. It’s oldish, written a year ago, but still captures the concept of what functional foods are: foods that are valued not as much for their calorie or nutrient content, but for the amount of health-beneficial compounds they bear.
It also raises the issue of labelling. See, the US Food and Drug Administration is very strict on what claims food companies are allowed to write on their labels. Here’s an example:
[snip]… juice makers can claim that cranberry products help maintain urinary tract health, but they cannot say cranberry juice cocktail prevents urinary tract infections.
Personally, I’m with the FDA on this. Unless there are sound scientific evidence supporting the claims (which the FDA are constantly reviewing), labels must be specifically and carefully worded. As it is, the review process for functional foods is already more relaxed than for pharmaceuticals, so such stringency can only be for the benefit of the consumers. Afterall we don’t want to buy stuff that claims more than it can deliver, do we?
