Nutrition Industry Executive (NIE) reached out to Alvin Berger, PhD, MS, Founder of Wayzata, MN-based LifeSense Products. Here’s more of what he had to say:
NIE: Broadly speaking, what’s most exciting today about ingredients for foods and beverages?
Berger: Twenty-five years ago, we knew functional ingredients like vitamin D, omega-3s, phytosterols, anti-inflammatory ingredients, “carb-blockers,” prebiotics and probiotics (to name a few) were beneficial for our health. Consumers purchased these ingredients hoping that these functional ingredients would benefit them.
This required a lot of trust from consumers, considering that the food industry and governmental agencies had misled consumers in the past. As examples, consumers were encouraged to consume trans-fat-laden margarine over butter and obesity-promoting low-fat, high-carbohydrate foods.
Today, we consume vitamin D and can now get a blood test to know if the dose is adequate for our particular genetics. We can consume algal or fish oils rich in omega-3s and can now take a quick finger-prick-based blood test to know if the supplement or functional food is working to increase our omega-3 levels adequately.
Soon, everyone, not just diabetics, will be able to wear a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), and know how their body responds to carbohydrate-rich foods and if the carb-blocker or concoction of ingredients purported to improve carbohydrate metabolism is actually working (i.e., lowering post-prandial blood glucose peaks, and slowing down the rate of increase and decrease in the peak). For example, if you are a person whose blood sugar is already 90-plus percent of the time in the optimal 70-140 mg/dl range, it would be a waste of money and even deleterious to try to lower your blood sugar further.
Stool testing and flora evaluation technology is evolving, too, so that soon we will be able to know what specific strains of probiotics to consume (the marketing hype is ahead of the science at this point).
Overall, with new and improved testing consumers will have confidence that the functional foods they consume actually work; this paves the way for individualized functional foods.
The other exciting thing about newer functional foods is that much more attention is paid to bioavailability. In the past, ingredients were mixed together with little attention to whether the active ingredients were absorbed and reached their target organ. Today’s functional foods and beverages are not only more bioavailable, but taste better and have better stability at room temperature.
NIE: What lies ahead for food-and-beverage ingredients?
Berger: In terms of functional ingredients for foods and beverages, manufacturers and sellers still operate under the principle that adding more and more ingredients together is better than fewer ingredients in terms of selling products and points of differentiation from their competitors. Ideally, companies must prove that adding a concoction of, say, 10 antioxidants is better than adding one antioxidant. The only way to prove this is to conduct a clinical trial and since manufacturers will be loathe to conduct such clinical trials (due to cost, time and likelihood of negative findings), this might lead back to a simpler list of functional, proven ingredients.
As the sugar content of foods and beverages was reduced, this led to more and more use of high-intensity sweeteners (HIS), which do not raise blood sugar, to impart desired sweetness. The older generation of HIS such as saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sucralose, neotame and advantame are fortunately on the decline. Many functional ingredients are also bitter by nature, and adding lots of sugar to mask the bitterness is no longer a good option; this is another reason HIS are used so frequently.
Current consumers have more experience with the HIS stevia and Luo Han Guo/monk fruit and also consuming sugar alcohols/polyols. Too much of these HIS likely train our brain to crave sweetness, can cause gastrointestinal upset, and possible detrimental changes to our gut flora (microbiome).
Perhaps we are better off with fewer HIS so that we can re-train our brains to enjoy less sweet, even slightly bitter foods, in the future and this will become a new trend?
