Nutraceutical Food Ingredients

In 1989, Stephen L. DeFelice, M.D., now the head of the Foundation for Innovation in Medicine, Cranford, NJ, coined the term "nutraceuticals" for foods fortified with ingredients that provide an inherent improvement in health and/or performance beyond their normal food value. The food industry recognized the potential, and, nearly 15 years later, that potential still has legs.

The industry has successfully ramped up orange juice with calcium, fortified eggs with omega-3s and much more. Still one challenge remains: making more of these so-called functional foods taste as good as their original, unfortified counterparts.

During a recent journey through the aisles of the July 2003 International Food Technologists (IFT) Food Expo® in Chicago, the poster sessions and the paper sessions revealed some of the latest trends in developing nutraceutical products.

"Nutraceutical food," by the way, is pure marketing-ese; it has no recognition in law or in a dictionary. These foods include a wide range of products, such as sports drinks and bars, enriched cereals, breads, fortified snack foods, baby foods, enriched soymilk and prepared meals. The ingredients that fortify these are termed "nutraceutical ingredients" or "functional ingredients."

As the members of the baby-boomer generation continue to rack up the years, there is one trend that they follow anxiously -- the trend into decay. Waistlines and memories are slipping, and no one likes it. This generation is characterized by a desire to live long lives and look good until the time the grim reaper does his thing. The term to describe this can be coined as "compressed morbidity" -- a healthy senescence and a quick heart attack on the tennis court when we're well into our 90s, please.

Unfortunately, the numbers are against them. According to a recent USA Today article, if the approximately 76 million baby boomers alive today live as long as they expect, so many could become demented that "a public health catastrophe will explode in the laps of (our) children." Indeed, about 4 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, and the number is projected to reach 12 to 15 million by 2050. Alzheimer's causes about two-thirds of dementia cases. Grim. Add to that the risk of cancer, cardiovascular problems and osteoporosis, and the demand for great-tasting functional foods to help stave off these statistics continues grow.

Science has well established that omega-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFAs) reduce the risk of a variety of diseases, including hypertension, cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis, cancer and autoimmune disease. Now, a growing body of research into the health effects of omega-3 LCPUFAs eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) demonstrates they beneficially affect brain health.

Most recently, Joseph Hibbeln, M.D., National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD, revealed that 1 gram of both EPA and DHA per day reduce the risk by 90% of impulsive and depressive disorders, including unipolar depression, bipolar depression, postpartum depression and homicide mortality. Major depression, suicide and homicide have been identified as the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Unfortunately, the median intake of EPA and DHA for adults is only 0.004 to 0.007 grams and 0.052 to 0.093 grams per day, respectively, according to Penny Kris-Etherton, Ph.D., Department of Nutritional Sciences, Penn State, University Park, PA.

Vegetable oils such as flaxseed, walnut, canola and soybean contain the shorter-chain omega-3 PUFA alpha linolenic acid (ALA), which is converted in the human body to EPA and DHA. However, the conversion is only 0.1% efficient. This is not surprising, considering that 45 million years of human evolution occurred in a seafood-rich nutritional environment.

For those trying to stay sane through those golden years, one recommendation might be to eat fish, a natural source of EPA and DHA, at least once a week. However, many people do not like fish, cannot afford it, or do not want to take fish-oil capsules. That's the opportunity.

The food industry has already responded to these individuals with a variety of products containing ALA, including crackers, spaghetti sauce, balsamic vinaigrette, focaccia, juices, cereals and dairy beverages. Omega-3 eggs come from chickens that eat DHA-enriched feed from algal or flaxseed sources. Hens convert flaxseed's alpha-linolenic fatty acid into EPA and DHA fatty acids more efficiently than humans so all three of these fatty acids end up in the egg yolks.

There is also potential for designing food products that contain both EPA and DHA directly, instead of ALA with its low conversion. EPA and DHA from fish oil, however, oxidize very easily and begin smelling like a pier at low tide when exposed to air, light, metals and heat.

However, try to formulate with fish oil and be ready for a humbling experience. While at Arthur D. Little, Boston, I developed a reasonably good-tasting ice cream that contained 250mg of commercially available forms (including encapsulated) of fish oil per 100-gram serving. The ice cream had no fishy notes when flavored similar to an orange-creamsicle; vanilla and chocolate ice cream, however, let the fishy notes come through. Obviously, a breakthrough, whether in the ingredient form, the process itself or in the finished product, is needed here.

Such a breakthrough may come from utilizing technology residing outside of the nutraceutical-foods segment. Cross-industry technology transfer is a trend that is sweeping the entire food industry, not just nutraceutical products. It simply means looking at ways that other industries, such as chemical, pharmaceutical, electronic and biotech, create innovative products, and thus borrowing from their best practices.

At DuPont Food Industry Solutions (DFIS), Wilmington, DE, a group created within DuPont's Agricultural and Nutrition Division, particle technology is being explored to solve problems in food product design, formulation and engineering. In order to solve the LCPUFA oxidation issue, carbon nanotubes, heavily researched in the electronics industry, could possibly be used to encapsulate volatile liquids, oxygen-sensitive materials, and other reactive food ingredients, such as flavor materials, without spray-drying or other means of conventional encapsulation.

During the first day of the IFT Expo, I had my bone density measured at the Glanbia Nutritionals, Inc., Monroe, WI booth. It was marginally acceptable (the bone density results, not Glanbia), so now I'm trying to figure out how to increase the calcium and other minerals in my diet, such as phosphorous, magnesium, potassium and zinc, without daily pills or supplements.

The NIH reports 44 million Americans are at risk for osteoporosis; 10 million individuals already have the disease and almost 34 million more are estimated to have low bone mass, placing them at increased risk for this disease. Most women realize this is a potential problem as they age, but an osteoporosis-related fracture will also affect 1 in 8 men sometime in their lives, according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, Washington, D.C.

In fact, men over 50 are at a greater risk for such a fracture than they are for prostate cancer. The World Health Organization has defined osteoporosis as the second-leading health-care problem after cardiovascular disease. Fortunately, the food industry began to address this issue roughly 20 years ago, and the trend to offer more calcium-based ingredients and finished products keeps growing.

The allowable health claim (21 C.F.R. 101.72) citing calcium's role in maintaining good bone health and reducing the risk of osteoporosis gives product marketers an attractive addition to their label, and added consumer legitimacy.

Perhaps owing to the success of calcium-fortified, chilled orange juice, with annual sales of $900 million, beverages seem to be the tip of the calcium-fortified iceberg.   Since 1997, Calcium-fortified beverages have also exhibited a 20% growth rate. It was no accident that Cargill's new investment, Nutrijoy, Manhattan, KS, is marketing a calcium fortified milk/juice combination beverage called Cal-C®, claiming to contain 50% more calcium than milk.

Another new entrant into the calcium-fortified juice category is Concord, MA-based Welch Foods Inc., with a calcium-fortified grape juice currently in the test-market stage. Kudos to the company's food technologists, who figured out how to avoid the precipitation of calcium tartrate (the reaction product of calcium with tartaric acid, a natural component of grape juice), and keep the juice clear and the calcium soluble.

Calcium-containing simple salts, such as calcium fumarate, citrate, lactate, carbonate, di- and tribasic phosphate, and gluconate are available in ingredient forms, each with its own calcium content, solubility, taste and cost issues. Especially important are the solubility and bioavailability of calcium-containing ingredients. Although the low pH of the stomach renders all calcium into its ionic form, precipitation as insoluble calcium phosphate, depending on the amount of phosphate present, can occur in the intestine, where the pH range is 6 to 7.

The human body cannot absorb the calcium in precipitated calcium phosphate. In order to improve calcium's solubility and bioavailability of calcium, various proprietary blends of calcium salts with milk protein, calcium salts with food acids and sugar, calcium/ amino-acid chelate complexes, proprietary blends of calcium salts, and calcium salts with polysaccharides have been developed for specific end-use products, depending on their final pH.

The variety of finished products fortified with calcium, especially beverages, is a long list indeed. Other calcium-fortified products, such as nutrition bars, cereals, waffles, pancake mixes, muffin mixes, shredded cheese, margarine, yogurt, cookies, crackers and soups are already taking up shelf space. But how about calcium-fortified light beer? Now that would be a winner!

They may not be everyone's cup of tea, but green foods, first investigated in the 1930s at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, have such a potent anticancer resume that it's impossible to ignore them. Nutraceuticals World reports that their consumption in Japan is a $2 billion market and their consumption in the United States certainly qualifies them as a trend, with estimated sales of $1 billion.

The 1999 issue of the Harvard Health Letter declares that eating green foods is one of the most important steps anyone can take to avoid cancer. It is not clear how the endoles, bioflavanoids and polyphenolic compounds found in green plants work to prevent cancer; suffice it to say that many published studies in phyto-research give evidence that they do. One theory is that since green plants are exposed to many hours per day of ultraviolet light, they have developed unique bioflavanoids that repair damage done to their nucleic acids.

As a graduate student, I researched the rate of metal-ion incorporation into a porphyrin ring system. Heme (found in mammalian blood) and chlorophyll are both porphyrins; they are amazingly similar in structure. Chlorophyll has a magnesium atom at its core, while heme has an iron atom. Researchers who have explored the beneficial structure-function relationship of animals and plants have noted such similarities.

A typical listing of green foods found in a health-food store includes cereal grasses (alfalfa, wheat grass and barley grass); micro-algae (chlorella and spirulina); seaweed (kelp); and dark-green vegetables (broccoli, kale and spinach). Only the dark-green vegetables are routinely found in supermarkets. Few of the other items appeal to the general public, so this trend might never become mainstream until food manufacturers find ways to make them taste good.

The beverage industry has made green tea more appealing -- how about tackling seaweed or wheat grass? Perhaps an industry contest can reward a product developer who can come up with the best-tasting formulation for a green food -- except you can't dip it in chocolate or fry it.

Delaying the inevitable effects of aging is a top priority with an estimated 10,000 baby boomers turning 50 each day. Foods that can help maintain mental health and prevent osteoporosis and cancer are readily available, but need a boost from talented product developers to make them more attractive and better-tasting to the mainstream consumer.

Omega-3 LCPUFAs, calcium-containing ingredients, and green foods are evolving in form and functionality, providing a variety of formulation options. It can be expected that these ingredients will continue to evolve as more products successfully enter the market.

Marvin J. Rudolph, Ph.D., is the business development director of DuPont Food Industry Solutions (DFIS), Wilmington, DE. For the past 18 years, he was the food product development director at Arthur D. Little Inc., a worldwide technology and management-consulting firm. He also has developed products for food companies such as Lehigh Dairy, General Foods and Ragu Foods.

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