Biotechnology Helps Create a Healthier French Fry
Date: 27.4.2006
Genetically enhanced potatoes absorb less oil when cooking.
Fueled by increased health concerns, consumers are passing on the once-ubiquitous side order of french fries in record numbers. Meanwhile, fast-food restaurants — the biggest purveyors of french fry fare — are looking for more healthy alternatives for their customers.
A genetically enhanced potato that absorbs less oil when fried could help create healthier french fries and healthier consumers. Researchers have developed a genetically enhanced potato with up to nearly two-thirds more starch than ordinary potatoes. The increased starch content increases the potatoes' density so they fry crisp without absorbing as much oil as their less-dense counterparts. The same technology could be used to create lower-fat potato chips as well.
By inserting a gene into potatoes that improves the conversion of sucrose, or sugar, into starch, the starch content of potatoes has been increased by between 30 percent and 60 percent.
Increasing the starch content reduces the moisture in potatoes, which means less oil is taken up by potatoes when they are cooked. That makes for a healthier food product. And it also reduces cooking costs.
French fry manufacturers reported that 2003 marked the biggest sales decline in 15 years — down 5 percent for wholesale and 10 percent for retail in 2002 — although they still reign as the United States' most popular side dish by a wide margin.
That drop-off follows a continuing decrease since 2000 in french fry sales at restaurants. Sales were down 3.3 percent in 2002 and 2.9 percent in 2001, according to a 2003 U.S. Potato Board report, "Get the Hard Facts About Our Changing French-Fry Market." When consumers were asked why they were eating fewer french fries, 72 percent said they were concerned about their diet or health.
"Consumers widely perceive fries to be 'bad for you,'" according to the report. "Although they like fries, consumers are eating fewer of them because of nutrition and health concerns."
Martina Newell-McGloughlin, director of the University of California system-wide biotechnology research and education program, said researchers still have to perfect the even distribution of starch granules in the enhanced potatoes, but that the higher-starch potatoes had huge potential for improving the nutritional value of fast-food french fries.
"A meeting of potato and oil is a major part of what they are doing," she said. "The ability to have a healthful product could have a significant impact on the industry."
In addition to the healthful benefits of a potato that absorbs less cooking oil, biotechnology is also being used to produce oil that is better for you.
A University of Nebraska researcher has developed a soybean — whose oil makes up more than 80 percent of all the edible oil consumed in the United States — that is higher in healthy monounsaturated fats that remain stable when used in cooking at high temperatures.
Stable monounsaturated fats are important for cooking because they don't need to be hydrogenated to make them more stable, as is required with oils that are high in polyunsaturated fats such as olive and some canola oils. Hydrogenation describes a process where hydrogen atoms are added to oil to prevent it from turning rancid and to keep it stable at room temperature. This is done with some types of peanut butter, for example, to keep it a consistent texture at room temperature; other, non-hydrogenated peanut butter must be kept in the refrigerator and must be stirred to mix the oil with the peanuts.
The problem with hydrogenated vegetable oils is that they can produce harmful trans fats, which can raise bad cholesterol levels and actually lower good cholesterol in the body.
As obesity becomes a greater public health problem around the world — and in the United States in particular — pressure is growing to provide more healthful foods.
About 300,000 people die each year in the United States as a result of obesity or being overweight — only smoking kills more Americans. Britain's Health Development Agency reports 15 percent of 15-year-olds and 8.5 percent of 6-year-olds are classified obese. In addition, a 1998 study revealed nearly half of all Canadians were overweight.
Newell-McGloughlin said increased consumer awareness of the healthy benefits of an improved biotech potato, coupled with increased consumer desire for healthy foods, could create demand for genetically enhanced food.
"With a quality output characteristic, then I think you have a real potential selling point for the consumer," she said. "And when the consumer wants it, the producer makes it available."
"Source":[ http://www.whybiotech.com/index.asp?id=consumers].
