True nutritional content and functional food- Weight Loss, Starvation Diets Vs. Functional Foods and Health Promotion (Part 2 of 4)

True nutritional content and functional food

Much of the focus today, with respect to the nutritional content of food, is placed on how much of a given vitamin or mineral it can provide and the calorie content. This small picture of food analysis ignores several important aspects related to the promotion of health. Food is more than just calories, vitamins and minerals. An interesting fact is: despite fortification & genetic alteration of foods to target dietary recommended daily intake values, the morbidity rates from chronic conditions, such as diabetes & obesity, continue to rise. To appreciate the effectiveness of food we need to step back and look at the larger picture. The first step to this realization is understanding that vitamins are more than just antioxidants. For example, vitamin C (a.k.a. ascorbic acid) is a complex structure which contains factors such as bioflavinoids, rutin, and enzymes which are preserved by an antioxidant (ascorbic acid). In truth, the many health benefits of vitamin C are eliminated with synthetic vitamin C supplementation or fortification, which only constitutes the antioxidant portion of the vitamin C complex, namely ascorbic acid. Stepping back from this picture it becomes apparent that what you see is not always what you get. The nutrition label on a box of cereal, for example, may indicate that a serving contains 50% of the recommended daily value (RDV) for vitamin C. However, more than 90% of the time it is rated by ascorbic acid content. Now consider broccoli. A serving of broccoli crowns contains 130% of the RDV for vitamin C (ascorbic acid) as well as the constituents of the vitamin C complex which help maintain vascular integrity & make blood vessels tougher and more durable (vitamin P factors), promote coagulation (vitamin K), and increase the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood (J factors). The trade-off is not worth it if you can prevent it.