[Exploring Life] The emergence of the term superfood originates in the idea that some foods are superior to others in terms of their potential health benefits. While no accepted definition currently exists, the word superfood usually refers to a specific kind of plant-based food source that provides superior levels of essential nutrients and is often described as having the ability to prevent disease. For the average consumer, there is an obvious attraction to eating foods that may improve health and prevent disease. For the marketer, a superfood represents an opportunity to sell products through the promotion powerful health claims. A superior health claim is the underlying prerequisite of any superfood. It is therefore important to understand the nature of any health claim being made.
Food and Health Claims
The ability to make a health claim on a food product is becoming an increasingly dominant aspect of commercial marketing. Consumers are becoming more and more attracted to food that promotes health in a proactive manner. Health Canada provides the following definition of a health claim:
A health claim is any representation in labeling or advertising that states, suggests, or implies that a relationship exists between consumption of a food or an ingredient in the food and a person’s health. [1]
A division of Health Canada called the Food Directorate is responsible for the development of policies, regulations and standards that serve to assess and enforce the content of health claims on food. This type government agency is common to many countries. The key aspect of the definition is in articulating the relationship between food and health. With respect to superfoods, a superior relationship must be evidenced. But the question remains, a superior relationship with respect to what? But there is already a significant lack of any credibility in these same agencies that purport to control the nature of superfoods. Historically, these very same policies, regulations and standards have completely failed to label food additives, ingredients, and sources that are in fact toxic and dangerous to human health. Why are there no health warnings on food products?
Nutritional science is the default expertise used to evaluate and approve health claims. The historical or cultural context of the food is usually ignored, creating a fundamental weakness in the methodology. Unfortunately, science alone is not enough to approve or disapprove any health claim with any degree of certainty. A scientific perspective is obviously important, but we also must remember that science is wrong as many times as it is right.
The question of trust also emerges. Can we trust government organizations to approve or disapprove health claims? It is well known that corporations, science and governments often coordinate their efforts in order to create a picture of something that is perhaps deceptive or does not exist. And why do we tend to ignore that vast and rich knowledge about food found in indigenous cultures around the world?
The Presence of Health Claims: The Absence of Health Warnings
On Sunday July 1st, 2007 the European Union ban the use of the term superfood unless evidence and proof could be provided that the food is in fact nutritionally superior. The legislation took full affect on July 1st, 2009. Since there is currently no clear definition of the term superfood there can therefore be no use of it with respect to food labeling. [2]
Placing standards on the use of the term superfood helps to restrict potential abuse by food producers attempting to manipulate consumers. A significant area of abuse is in the addition of nutraceuticals [3] to existing food-like substances (i.e. – something we eat that is not strictly “food”) in order to create the illusion of a healthy choice. [4] If a product contains a label advertising some kind of health benefit it is likely something we should not consume. Food in its ideal state requires no additives of any kind.
One of the most confusing and delusional aspects of government food regulation is that it completely fails to provide warnings about food additives and the presence of chemicals that are toxic to human health. For example, why does a head of lettuce that has chemical residue from pesticides throughout its cellular structure (and can’t simply be washed off) not have a food label indicating its presence to consumers? The focus seems to be on restricting the ability to make excessive health claims, while completely ignoring the glaringly obvious reality that a great deal of our food supply is in fact toxic to human health. For example, where are the warning labels on food products that contain excessive amounts of sodium?
Even more bizarre is the ban against food labels that indicate a medicinal benefit. In other words, food agencies do not consider the possibility that food can be medicine.
Labels are not allowed to claim that food can treat, prevent or cure any disease or medical condition. These sorts of claims can only be made for licensed medicines. [5]
This statement is simply misguided and horrifically ethnocentric. The effective use of medicinal herbs has a vibrant presence in many cultures around the world and to ignore the possibility of food as medicine is wrong.
The reality is that we can place very little trust in the regulations, standards, and policies of government food agencies since they have already completely failed to protect consumers from the high levels of toxicity already pervasive throughout our food supply. The need to clearly define and elevate the ideal of a superfood is obvious so that it is not subject to the never-ending circus of marketing abuse and deception. However, to place this responsibility in the hands of existing agencies that have already failed to ensure that our food is healthy is at best misguided. In other words, the quality of the food we eat is unavoidably both an individual and local community responsibility.
The Superfood Health Claim
It is reasonable to assume that there are food producers who are willing abuse superfood health claims in order to sell more of their product to unwary consumers. The superfood health claim appeals to consumers who want to optimize healthy eating, but it is also a claim that can result in both confusion and deception. The intervention of government agencies, if history is our guide, are unlikely to provide a solution but will simply add to the confusion.
Nutritional science cannot lead the superfood quest, but it can make a valuable contribution to it. Nutritional science suffers from an obsession with analysis and an ignorance of context. It is also immersed in a technologically advanced and modern culture, and that culture is rampant with health problems and disease that clearly relate to food and dietary habits. The links across corporate interests, nutritional science and government regulation must be redefined in order for society to make any kind of meaningful progress.
Equally important is the insight provided by historians and cultural anthropologists who can sensitively integrate concepts from nutritional science as a way of explaining why certain cultural groups in the world have better health and healing abilities than others. There is a pressing need for cultural anthropologists to provide greater insight and therefore possibilities into the superfood ideal.
Superfood is ultimately both an ideal and a quest to find the most nutritionally valuable food sources in their natural form on the planet. To pursue this quest is to pursue food as sustenance, nutrition, and medicine, in as many different cultural contexts as possible.
Notes
- Health Canada – Food and Nutrition – Food Labelling – Health Claims (Accessed July 2009)
- The EU ban is described in the BBC News: Superfood ‘ban’ comes into effect. General background on the problems associated with the term superfood is provided in BBC News: Superfoods. (Accessed July 2009)
- Nutraceuticals are not food, nor are a superfood. A nutraceutical is a food derivative that can be added to a food-like substance creating the illusion of a product that is “healthier” by virtue of its presence. A nutraceutical may be derived from a superfood, but it is not the actual food itself. NY Times: Superfood or Monster from the Deep? (Sept 17, 2008) “These additives are often called nutraceuticals, broadly defined as ingredients that are derived from food, and that offer health benefits associated with that food. Nutraceuticals like garlic pills and cranberry capsules became popular in the 1990s, usually taken alone in the form of dietary supplements.”
- The difference between a food and a food-like substance is described in Food: Healthy Eating Principles. Food is: a) Real – as close to its natural state as possible; b) Clean – antibiotic-hormone-pesticide free; c) Organic – free of toxins and non-GMO; d) Local – locally produced. Anything we eat that does not meet all four requirements is not food, but is a food-like substance.
- Food Standards Agency: Health Claims “General claims about benefits to overall good health, such as ‘healthy’ or ‘good for you’, will be only allowed to be used if accompanied by an appropriate and approved claim. This means that more general claims must be backed up by an explanation as to why the food is ‘healthy’ or what makes it a ’superfood’.”
