THE FUTURE OF NUTRITION

By Debbie Markel, CH, CNHP

            Some time ago, I spoke to a special group of Powhatan High School students who were entering a state-wide competition in problem-solving.  Their topic was “The Future of Nutrition,” which turned out to be a much broader subject than I anticipated.  When preparing for my talk, I realized that there’s a lot more to consider about nutrition in our future than just what foods we’ll be eating and in what form.  I wanted to share the results of this interesting research with the readers of Powhatan Today because of the wide-reaching impact of various issues on all of us, including farmers, consumers, health care workers, social workers, scientists, philosophers, clergy, and more.  It made me think “outside the box” about our nutritional challenges; and hopefully, you’ll find it interesting as well.  Also, since there was so much to learn, I’m begging your indulgence to allow two articles to present it all.

            According to www.dictionary.com, genomics is the branch of genetics that studies organisms in terms of their genomes (their full DNA sequences).  By studying human genomes, scientists believe that in the future, diseases may be prevented because diets and drugs will be individually tailored to each person’s needs.  Prenatal care will improve because before a baby is even born, its DNA can be studied and the mother’s diet changed to prevent certain birth defects.  Finally, people will live much longer because it will be possible to identify genetic tendencies toward certain illnesses which will be circumvented through diet and lifestyle changes before they even appear.  The U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute (http://www.genome.gov/) states, “Theoretically, the steps by which genetic risk information would lead to improved health are: (1) an individual obtains genome-based information about his/her own health risks; (2) the individual uses this information to develop an individualized prevention or treatment plan; (3) the individual implements that plan; (4) this leads to improved health; and (5) healthcare costs are reduced.  This sounds like a winning formula to me.

            One of the futuristic-sounding practices in nutrition is the development of functional foods.  Functional foods are foods that have nutraceuticals (vitamins, herbs, or other supplements) added to them.  This is really nothing new because we’ve been consuming functional foods since the beginning of the 20^th century.  For example, our bread is fortified with B-vitamins and our milk has Vitamin D added to help with calcium absorption.  This research will be taken to the next level in the future.  An article from the Nutrition Action Newsletter published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (http://www.cspinet.org/nah/4_99/functional_foods.htm) contained the following comments: “Within ten to 15 years, it is conceivable that people will be able to get their blood pressure medication within a food,” says Gene Grabowski, spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers of America, a trade association. “We’ll be able to put medicine in a hot dog bun or aspirin in cake batter.  But we don’t want to go there.  How would cake be regulated as a medicine?”  Another perspective was presented from a nutritionist as follows: “My concern is that functional foods will distract people from eating healthy diets and encourage companies to market absurd products as health foods just because they contain one or another single nutrient,” says Marion Nestle, chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University.  “Let’s face it,” she adds, “functional foods are about marketing, not health. Fruits and vegetables are already perfectly adequate to help prevent cancer and heart disease.”  Finally, while having medicine served to us in cake sounds appealing, we should consider the possible adverse reactions that could occur from functional foods.  For example, if someone is taking blood-thinning medications, it may not be safe for them to drink juice fortified with ginkgo biloba, an herb known for its blood-circulating and thinning properties.  Also, what would happen if a two-year old child accidentally ate a piece of cake that contained medicine?  These are only a few challenges we’ll face when more and more functional foods are sold.  An uninformed public may cause itself more harm than good by consuming certain functional foods.

            Bioengineering is an extremely controversial topic.  A bioengineered food is one that has been genetically modified to attain a certain characteristic (which is why these foods are dubbed “GMO” foods).  These characteristics include pesticide, herbicide and virus resistance; delayed fruit ripening; altered oil content; and pollen control (see Table 1). Cornell University’s Genetically Engineered Organisms Public Education Project (http://www.geo-pie.cornell.edu/gmo.html) estimates that 60 to 70% of foods in US markets already contain at least a small quantity of some crop that has been genetically engineered.  Corn and soybeans are two of the most prevalent because many other foods contain soy or corn products.  At the present time, GMO foods are not required to be labeled as such, so we don’t even know when we’re eating them.  Some of the major controversies surrounding GMO foods include the following:

1.         There is no knowledge of the long-term impact because no long-term studies have ever been done on them.  In fact, many countries in Europe do not allow GMO foods to be sold there.

2.         We don’t know the ecological implications from GMO plants cross-pollinating with non-GMO plants or what may occur over time to wild animals, birds and insects that consume GMO plants and seeds.  Also, in order to survive, new strains of fungi, bacteria, insects and other organisms may emerge, causing new problems with our food supply.

3.         There are ethical and religious issues questions about cross-breeding plants with animal genes, a process that has been studied and experimented with, but not yet introduced into the marketplace.  Vegetarians or people who practice religions with restricted dietary requirements may not realize they’re consuming a taboo ingredient. 

4.         Since GMO foods are not labeled, people with allergies could have problems when they consume GMO foods containing a substance to which they’re allergic.  Some scientists contend that eventually, however, they may be able to breed the allergens out of foods.

Some of the benefits of GMO foods include food with longer shelf-lives, pesticide-resistant crops, vitamin-enriched foods, less-fatty meats, more fertile livestock that grows faster, reduction in allergen-causing constituents of foods, and breeding medicines into foods.  Some proponents feel that countries with hunger problems will be able to benefit greatly from the vitamin-enriched foods such as “golden rice,” which is Vitamin A-fortified rice.

These are all topics for greater minds than mine to tackle, but worthy of serious thought by all of us.  I do feel that our food-purchasing decisions should be based on complete knowledge, and in my opinion, GMO foods should be required to be labeled for that reason.

TABLE 1.  APPROVED GENETICALLY ENGINEERED PLANT SPECIES AND THEIR TRAITS

There are 12 genetically engineered plant species that have been approved for commercial production in the US, and the traits that have been genetically engineered into them fall into six categories as follows:

                       EXAMPLES OF CONTROVERSIAL GMO PROJECTS AND THEIR OUTCOMES

Tomatoes with fish antifreeze genes                                Unsuccessful

Soybeans with Brazil nut allergens                                  Never marketed

Potatoes with snowdrop toxins                                        Never marketed

Rice that produces extra vitamin A                                  Not yet submitted for regulatory approval

"Terminator" seeds that are sterile                                   Will not be marketed

 (Table 1 and the above examples are from the Cornell University Genetically Engineered Organisms Public Education Project, http://www.geo-pie.cornell.edu/traits/traits.html)

            Being a global society has its pros and cons.  The world is shrinking, but waistlines around the world aren’t.  Countries whose citizens have traditionally been fit and slim are experiencing a rapid rise in obesity that is beginning to rival ours in the United States.  Businesses like McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King are opening in China and Japan, places where obesity was rarely known until recently.  The World Health Organization (WHO) calls it “globesity,” and says, “Paradoxically coexisting with under-nutrition, an escalating global epidemic of overweight and obesity – “globesity” – is taking over many parts of the world. If immediate action is not taken, millions will suffer from an array of serious health disorders.” (http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/obesity/en/ index.html)  WHO attributes this problem to the decline of indigenous diets around the world.  Countries like Japan, whose primary diets used to consist primarily of fish and rice, are now consuming lots of red meats and dairy products.  This is one of the disadvantages of global trade.  A good overview of this issue is at http://www.who.int/hpr/NPH/docs/gs_obesity.pdf.

On the other hand, the WHO and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) are doing positive work to standardize nutritional requirements, agricultural practices, and the use of herbicides and pesticides around the world.  Their effort is named Codex Alimentarius, and its mission is “…protecting health of the consumers and ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations.” (http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/index_en.jsp)  Their goal is that these standards will result in the decline of global hunger and malnutrition through the implementation of sustainable agriculture methods which will make third-world countries more independent.  In turn, many nutrition-related diseases and malnutrition may be reduced or eliminated in the future.

            Up until the terrorist attacks of 9-11, keeping current and future food supplies safe from enemies was never a primary concern.  In today’s climate, however, this issue has become a new priority.  Our government has designed several programs to protect the food supply in the U.S.  The United States Department of Agriculture’s website states that they have already implemented “…more effective prevention programs, new surveillance systems, and faster food-borne illness outbreak response capabilities.” (http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/ fsterrqa.html)  A good overview of this problem is at http://www.foodsafety.gov/~fsg/bioterr.html.  There are other food safety issues we will have to tackle in the future.  Because many types of bacteria are becoming antibiotic-resistant, we will need to find other ways to combat the pathogens that contaminate our food.  The FAO has a committee devoted solely to food control systems.  Their mission is to enforce food laws and regulations to provide consumer protection at all levels of food production, handling, storage, processing and distribution.  For more information about food borne illnesses, you may want to read the following article, “Emerging Issues in Microbiological Food Safety” from Annual Review of Nutrition, Vol. 17: 255-275 (1997), which can be found at http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146 /annurev.nutr.17.1.255.                 

            One of the ways we can combat nutrition-related illnesses, like Type II diabetes and hyperlipidemia (high cholesterol) is through public education, particularly in schools.  Right now, schools do teach nutrition, but according to a study done in 1996 by the National Center for Education Statistics, they’re not going into enough depth or emphasizing motivation, attitudes, and eating behaviors (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs/web/96852.asp).  The FAO states, “Effective nutrition education can motivate and enable people to adopt healthful dietary patterns and healthy lifestyles. Schools are a particularly important setting for nutrition education…” (http://www.fao.org/es/ESN/nutrition/education_schools_en.stm)  The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) reports that only 2% of children (2 to 19 years) meet the USDA’s five main recommendations for a healthy diet.  Three out of four children consume more saturated fat than is recommended in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.  Three out of four American high school students do not eat even the minimum recommended number of servings (five) of fruits and vegetables each day. (http://www.cspinet.org/nutritionpolicy/nutritional_integrity.pdf) Future implications for not teaching good eating habits at an early age include staggering health care costs and widespread diseases.  I believe this is a serious problem, but one that would be very easy to fix.

            The final issue for the future of nutrition is ethics in advertising and research.  Every day we are bombarded by advertisements that cite credible-sounding scientific studies to back up their claims.  One example of this is the recent campaign by the milk industry stating that drinking milk helps people lose weight.  What these claims don’t state is where the universities’ research money came from.  According to the CSPI, who keeps a database of researchers’ ties to the industries they study at http://www.cspinet.org/integrity/index.html, the National Dairy Council funded the milk and weight loss study at the universities where the studies were performed.  Often the researchers or their institutions have board members in common or other ties to private industry.  When private organizations that exist to promote products fund research, they expect to get the results they pay for.  This dilutes research integrity and can often mislead the public.  To ensure we’re getting all the facts, we should demand that all funding sources be revealed whenever studies are released in the future.  This would at least allow us to know whether the results are objective or not. 

The last issue to consider in the future is ethics in advertising, particularly to children.  The Board on Children, Youth and Families (BOCYF) of the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) recently published a report titled “Food Marketing to Children and Youth: Threat or Opportunity?” (2006)   The entire report is online at http://darwin.nap.edu/books/0309097134/html/, and it states, “…current food and beverage marketing practices puts children's long-term health at risk.”  Those of us who have children know how hard it is to convince our kids that the food and beverage industries don’t necessarily have their best interests at heart.  Many groups are speaking out about ethical advertising to children and hopefully, in the future, when our kids are bombarded with ads for fruits, vegetables, and healthy grains, we won’t have to continually say “no!”

These past two articles have presented many challenges regarding nutritional needs in the future.  Hopefully, you’ve found at least one topic that sparks some interest for you.  By working on these areas in the present, we can make sure the future of nutrition is even better for generations to come.

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