Foodmakers Meet Consumer Demand for Functional Food

NEW YORK─ Anchovy-laced orange juice, beet-enriched peanut butter and green bean-infused pound cake are just a few of foodmakers’ latest product offerings that cater to health-conscious consumers’ desire for functional foods.

Kraft, Dannon, General Mills and several other companies are infusing their products with nutraceuticals that add benefits such as digestion regulation, fat-burning and parasite-killing powers to food.

New food processing technologies and a 1999 court decision that gave supplement makers broad leeway to advertise their products’ health benefits, have enabled foodmakers to create a variety of products enriched with a slue of odorless, tasteless vitamins, mineral, supplements and antioxidants.

“People want their food to have the same organoleptic qualities, not be gritty or taste different or feel weird,” Kevin Stark, head of the food technology division of NineSigma, told The New York Times.

Foodmakers are utilizing technologies that allow them to remove the fishy smell of fish, distill a pomegranate into flavorless powder and deliver nutritional benefits via tiny capsules engrained in food.

However, change brings controversy and as nutraceuticals lack FDA regulation and standardization, some question whether these enriched products really possess all benefits they propose.

“Whether a tomato is good for you, that’s one thing,” Dr. Kessler told the newspaper. “Whether the lycopene in a tomato is good for you, that’s another. And then whether synthetic lycopene and microencapsulated lycopene are also good for you, that’s yet another thing.”

Dr. Jeffrey Mechanick, a professor of endocrinology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, told the newspaper though many public health studies have proven the effects of certain nutrients, “science hasn’t been done on the new nutraceutical products and the FDA.’s current labeling standards are inadequate.”

Rising energy, material and transport costs have also posed a problem to many foodmakers, forcing many companies to refocus their research and development. Thus, many companies have sought inexpensive “value-added” products that consumers are willing to splurge on. For example, Mars’s CocoaVia line of chocolate is marketed to offer consumers the health benefits of high levels of antioxidants. The chocolate costs consumers about $1.25, while it only costs manufacturers about 75 cents to make.

Despite critics’ concerns, as foodmakers continually find new ways to enrich foods and as consumers’ desire for functional foods continues to grow, experts predict that this a growing trend that is unlikely to slow.

“One day, we believe, you will be able to walk into a supermarket and all the products could be enriched with omega-3s: milk, yogurt, tortillas,” Ian Lucas, head of marketing for Ocean Nutrition Canada told The New York Times.