Future Prospects for Functional Foods

Abstract

A new definition of nutrition has begun to take shape within the past decade. This definition goes beyond the traditional role of foods and nutrition in health promotion and disease prevention. It was only a few decades ago that Atwater completed his classic studies to determine the calorie content of foods and differentiate the energy content of the macronutrients protein, carbohydrate, and fat (Davidson et a1. 1975). Organic chemistry gave rise to the new view that food is made up of a complex array of organic molecules, all somehow contributing to the composition, nutritional value, and hedonistic qualities of our diet. At the start of the twentieth century, organic chemists isolated trace constituents of food and found that they contained small molecules that had amino groups that could prevent and treat disease. These substances were called life-giving amines, or vitamins. Following the discovery of vitamins A through K came the view that nutrients could be used to treat many diseases beyond the deficiency diseases of scurvy, beriberi, pellagra, xerophthalmia, and rickets. From the 1930s through the 1970s, however, research indicated that for individuals consuming the standard Western diet it would be very hard to produce a clinical deficiency with regard to these various nutrients. The determination that nutrients could not be used to treat diseases other than the traditional nutrient-deficiency diseases resulted in significant loss of interest in nutrition in medical school education. As a consequence, in the 1970s no U.S. medical school had a required nutrition course in its curriculum.