Functional foods are foods that not only provide nutritional value and sustenance, but also additional health benefits. The term first surfaced in Japan in the 1980s as part of a food approval process run by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, to identify foods that contained ingredients that had a beneficial effect on health and disease prevention.
Today the idea of functional foods and superfoods has become somewhat intertwined and this shouldn’t be the case according to Dr Blumberg, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. Interviewed by Food Insight, Dr Blumberg says that there isn’t a scientific or regulatory definition for a superfood, it’s more of a marketing term, whereas a functional food or ingredient has gone beyond meeting basic nutritional needs to support some physiological function or reduce the risk for some known disease. He says that the future of functional foods is very bright and that the more we learn about nutrition science, and about how the components in our diets and in our dietary patterns promote health or reduce our risk for common chronic diseases, the more we're going to see functional foods being formulated and used as a basis for dietary guidelines.
Food Insight provides an extensive list of foods containing functional components, but two very clear examples of functional foods are probiotics and prebiotics. We’re all aware of the importance of probiotics, but less well known is prebiotics, and while the two might sound similar, they play different roles in our bodies.
To recap: our digestive tract contains ‘good’ bacteria which helps protect us from harmful bacteria and fungi, they send necessary signals to our immune system and they help regulate inflammation. This fine balance between good and bad gut bacteria is influenced by the food we eat. Research shows that a diet high in sugar and fat influences the balance negatively allowing the harmful element to overgrow. This, in turn, sets off a chain reaction which allows bad bacteria to thrive with less resistance than before and so on.
Probiotics then are the ‘good’ bacteria that help keep our digestive system functioning optimally – they can be found in a variety of foods including yoghurt and fermented foods like Sauerkraut or certain types of pickles. Prebiotics, on the other hand are types of fibre that we can’t digest, but our stomach gut can, so in essence, it’s food for our good bacteria, and the more we feed them the healthier we’ll be. Prebiotics are found in the fibre of vegetables, fruit and legumes – foods particularly high in prebiotic fibre include the aforementioned legumes, beans and peas, oats, bananas, berries, Jerusalem artichokes, asparagus, dandelion greens, garlic, leeks and onions. Foods considered synbiotic are those that contain both probiotics and prebiotics, and an example of this is Sauerkraut.
We all know that eating a balanced and varied diet is essentially the way to good health, but if you want to up the ante, make sure to include those berries, bananas and sauerkraut – although ideally not in that order. Here’s to happy gut bacteria and functional foods!
