Plant Biotechnology Can Play a Key Role in Developing Healthier 'Functional Foods'
Date: 5.1.2006
Taste is number one for consumers, but health is becoming more important in food selection.
Toward the end of a recent presentation on healthy lycopene-enhanced tomatoes at the Biotechnology Industry Organization's (BIO) annual meeting in June 2003, Autar Mattoo, a researcher for the U.S. Agriculture Department (USDA), was asked how his healthier tomatoes tasted.
"I think they taste as good or better than the controls," he said.
The comment speaks volumes about what's most important to U.S. consumers — even though researchers and nutritionists focused on the three-fold increase in lycopene levels in the enhanced tomatoes Mattoo helped develop.
The BIO session, titled "Functional Foods: Can You Get Too Much of a Good Thing?" examined the theory and nutritional science behind functional foods as well as the reality of how such foods have fared in the marketplace. "Functional foods," such as lycopene-enhanced tomatoes, are defined as foods that have nutritional value beyond what is typically derived from traditional foods.
While there are many functional foods in development that use plant biotechnology — including cancer-fighting tomatoes, vitamin E-enriched corn and canola oil, soybeans with higher levels of healthy monounsaturated fats, vitamin A-enriched mustard and vitamin A-enriched rice — more traditional foods such as orange juice fortified with calcium are also considered functional foods.
Research has consistently shown that for U.S. consumers, taste is by far the most important factor when it comes to buying food.
"Based on numerous consumer research surveys we are aware of, most consumers would seldom give up good taste for a health benefit," said Shirley Chen, a researcher with Unilever Bestfoods, one of the largest food and personal care product companies in the world. "And many of them would not give up convenience for a health benefit."
Chen, who also spoke at the BIO session, said food companies have faced a challenge in marketing functional foods to consumers. While some have not fared well in the marketplace, ProActiv a margarine spread, which - is clinically proven to lower harmful cholesterol levels by 10-15 percent in three weeks, is selling extremely well in Europe (although not as well as expected in the United States, where the margarine is marketed as Take Control), said Chen.
"The functional food market is growing and has passed its infancy, but how fast it will grow to maturity is something to be watched," she said.
Some are predicting strong growth as consumers become increasingly attuned to health concerns. Global sales of functional foods were $55.7 billion in 2002, with a little more than a third of those sales ($19.8 billion) occurring in the United States. Projected annual growth in sales to 2007 is expected to be 6.9 percent globally, 6.7 percent in Japan, 1.9 percent in Europe and 7.9 percent in the United States.
One area of growth may be in heart healthy vegetable oils — particularly those used by fast food restaurants for deep frying and in the cooking of processed snacks, said Joe Spence, acting associate deputy administrator in the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, who also spoke at the BIO session.
Sales of French fries at restaurants such as McDonald's have dropped significantly since 2000 — primarily due to health concerns. 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 less 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."
To improve the health profile of snacks and fast food, Spence said food companies have shown a lot of interest in a conventionally developed and newly released sunflower variety whose oil contains about 65 percent of the stable monounsaturated fats that are good for industrial cooking and about 26 percent of polyunsaturated fats that help make food cooked in the oil taste good.
"Farmers almost can't grow it fast enough," said Spence.
Stable monounsaturated fats are important for cooking because they do not have 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. 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. Because of these concerns, the FDA has required that nutrition labels on foods list trans fats beginning Jan. 1, 2006.
Although traditional breeding has been used to develop oils with higher levels of monounsaturated fats, plant biotechnology has also been used to develop healthier oils in crops where traditional techniques have not been effective.
A University of Nebraska researcher, for example, has developed a soybean — which is still years away from being on the market — that is higher in healthy monounsaturated fats that remain stable when used in cooking at high temperatures. Soybean oil makes up more than 80 percent of all the edible oil consumed in the United States, according to the American Soybean Association.
Similarly, both plant biotechnology and traditional breeding have been used to develop tomatoes with increased levels of lycopene, a healthful antioxidant that slows down damage to human cells caused by aging and disease. It is one of many healthful phytochemicals that can be found in fruits and vegetables.
Mattoo, together with Avtar Handa from Purdue University in Indiana, developed the healthier, genetically enhanced tomatoes.
A landmark 1996 study by Harvard University found that the risk of prostate cancer in men who ate at least 10 servings per week of foods containing conventional tomato sauce was reduced by a third compared with those who ate these foods less than twice a week.8 Other studies have shown that lycopene may also help in protecting against Alzheimer's disease, cancers of the digestive tract and heart disease.
Although there have been no studies that define the exact amount of lycopene that is considered healthy, it is generally recommended that between 8 and 10 milligrams be consumed every day, according to Dr. A Venket Rao of the University of Toronto's Department of Nutritional Sciences.
You would have to eat about 10 raw tomatoes to obtain 10 milligrams of lycopene, said Mattoo. By contrast, eating just one or two lycopene-enhanced tomatoes would provide that amount.
While there are no known risks of consuming too much lycopene, there are risks of consuming too many other compounds such as vitamin A, which can cause toxic effects at just five times the government's recommended dietary allowance, said Spence.
"We don't want to overdo it," he said.
At the same, he said he views the research to develop a genetically enhanced rice with higher levels of vitamin A as "extremely positive and very beneficial." Every year, between 250,000 and 500,000 children go blind because of vitamin A deficiency, according to the World Health Organization. And about half of these children die within a year of losing their sight.
Spence said researchers are just beginning to understand all of the many healthful ingredients found in foods. "There are literally thousands of potentially active components in fruits and vegetables," said Spence. "We don't know everything we need to know about the active ingredients."
In addition, he said, it's becoming clear that people have varying nutritional requirements.
"We are a nation of great diversity in the United States and we know that nutritional requirements depend on who you are as an individual — your racial background, your genetic background, your lifestyle and whether you have a history or heart disease or whether you exercise," he said.
Genetic research is helping to better identify all of the many healthful ingredients in foods that will help in the development of even more healthful functional foods for the future.
"source":[ http://www.whybiotech.com/index.asp?id=4005].
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