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8 THE RURAL VOICE
Jeffrey Carter
The paths to eating well
Jeffrey
Carter is a
freelance
journalist
based in
Dresden,
Ontario.
If Dr. Bruce Holub has his way,
we'll soon be able to eat our five to
seven daily servings of fruits and
vegetables by mowing down fast
food.
Holub, a nutrition science professor
at the University of Guelph. is right
when he suggests many North
Americans are eating themselves to
death. There's too much meat and fat
in our diet and not enough of those
vegetables your mom insisted you
clean off your plate. Even for those
who avoid the fast food lines, there
are plenty of unhealthy choices to be
had in today's supermarkets.
It's not that healthy choices are
unavailable. The problem is that most
people find it difficult to permanently
change their eating patterns.
Holub's solution is that we convert
the benefits of fruits and veggies,
and anything else that's missing in
our diets, into a concentrated form
that could be added to such things as
hamburger buns — a kind of have
your cake and eat it too attitude.
Either that or take nutraceuticals
directly as st'pplements for what
we're missing.
A couple of new terms have been
coined to describe this latest direction
of the agri-food industry.
"Nutraceuticals" are the
concentrates or supplements of which
Holub speaks, things like soy
isoflavones and soy saponin. The
term "functional food" simply refers
to a food product that contains at
least one "nutraceutical."
There's merit in Holub's suggest-
ions but also reason for caution.
Soy isoflavones may not be as
healthy as ADM, the company that's
promoted and researched them,
would like you to think. Concerns
have been raised about everything
from thyroid disorders and goiters to
endocrine disruption and cancer.
Singling out soy isoflavones is
probably unfair, however. There are
other nutraceutical isolates that carry
little safety concern -baggage. Still,
other questions need to be answered.
Is it realistic to suggest that all the
health benefits derived from fruits
and vegetables can be concentrated
into powder form and added to
something like a hamburger bun?
Besides, such an approach to eating is
surely an affront to the culinary arts,
not to mention our taste buds.
Farmers also have reason for
concern. Holub admits that the
nutraceutical/functional foods indus-
try is still mired in its investment
stage. In other words, truck -loads of
capital have been spent researching
the possibilities but there hasn't been
much return on the investment.
That leaves a lineup of people
waiting for a payback. Farmers. as
they often are, will be at the tail end
of that line, if they're in the line at
all. You see, farmers are not meant to
play the value-added game. In the
agri-food industry. farmers are
viewed as providers of a raw product
and the marketplace seldom puts
much value in that. Still, farmers will
need to be convinced they have an
important role to play if nutra-
ceuticals and functional foods are to
come on the marketplace.
An alternative farmers might
consider is the value -saved approach.
That means marketing unadulterated
foods to consumers and discovering a
more direct route to their wallets.
Consumers need to understand that
there's an inherent value to the things
that spring from the soil beyond the
measure of currency. Food sustains.
Food, in its unadulterated form, can
become a delight to the senses with
all the nutritional benefits required
for a long and healthy life.
What's needed, from the farmers'
perspective, is for more consumers to
recognize those facts and acquire
basic kitchen skills. Once they do,
they'll understand that connecting
directly with farmers is their best
option and both sides will gain in the
process.0