Fortified foods |Nutrification of Foods |Genetically Modified Foods

“Nutrification” refers to the process of increasing the nutrient content of a food to improve the dietary intake of a population. Scientist Paul Bauernfeind calls it “the most rapidly applied, most flexible, and most socially acceptable form of public health intervention designed to improve the health of a population without requiring education or behaviour modification.”

A common method of nutrifying foods is fortification, defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) as “deliberately increasing the content of essential micronutrients in a food so as to improve the nutritional quality of the food supply and provide a public health benefit with minimal risk to health.”

Fortification programs may be mandated by law or initiated voluntarily by industry. Foods are selected for nutrient delivery based on the degree to which a population regularly consumes them, a region- specific assessment. (Alternatives exist: vitamin supplements in the form of powders or pills can be delivered directly to individuals or households, for instance, if food fortification isn’t feasible.)

The three major fortification programs employed globally provide vitamin A, iron, and iodine, all of which reduce pain and suffering and mortality, decrease healthcare costs, and curtail lost economic productivity and income .

Iodine fortification

Iodine, for example, is required for proper functioning of the thyroid gland, and inadequate intakes result in a large neck growth (goiter). Low iodine during pregnancy and early childhood seriously compromises neurological development, leading to severe intellectual disability. Early Chinese writings (c.3600 bce) recorded decreases in goitre following consumption of sea vegetables, and research in the early 19th century identified iodine as the responsible nutrient. Endemic iodine deficiency was observed around the world as well as in the US “goiter belt” (Great Lakes, Appalachia, Northwest) in the early 20th century.

Iodized salt was first sold in Michigan in 1924 following a successful program in Switzerland. Today, more than 120 countries mandate salt fortification.

Folate Fortifications

• Fortification programs have evolved alongside nutrition knowledge, and more recent applications include the prevention of chronic diseases and birth defects.
• An association between folate deficiency and neural tube defects (NTDs) was first hypothesized in 1965. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in England and Hungary initially showed that supplementation during early pregnancy was protective.
• Research evidence accumulated, and the early 1990s saw increased efforts in the US to educate women of childbearing age to consume a folate supplement, as the effects occur during the first 28 days of conception, often before a woman is aware of the pregnancy.
• Experts eventually suggested folate fortification as a better means to prevent NTDs. The US, Canada, and Costa Rica first implemented mandatory fortification in 1998, followed by Chile (2000) and South Africa (2003).
• Grain- containing foods like breakfast cereals and bread were nutrified with folate in the US. Subsequent studies showed a 19– 32% decrease in NTDs such as spina bifida and anencephaly, leading some to call folic acid fortification “one of the most successful public health initiatives in the past 50– 75 years.”
• Still, there are always potential adverse consequences from fortification programs, and some have considered whether the increased consumption of folate among those not at risk for NTDs may lead to an increased risk of heart disease and some cancers. While studies have not shown deleterious impacts thus far, research is ongoing.

Biofortification

The addition of the prefix “bio” to the word “fortification” refers to nutrification through conventional plant breeding and agronomic practices (e.g., selecting cereals for high protein or iron content) or through genetic modification (e.g., modifying genes to produce nutrients).

The goal of biofortification is to increase nutritional content during production rather than processing “to reach populations where supplementation and conventional fortification activities may be difficult to implement and/ or limited,” according to WHO.

Current biofortification projects around the world include beta- carotene (vitamin A) in sweet potato, maize, and cassava , zinc in wheat, rice, beans, maize, and sweet potato , iron in rice, beans, legumes, cassava, and sweet potato ,and protein and amino acids in sorghum and cassava.

“Golden rice” is another example, in which genetic engineering is used to create a rice that produces beta- carotene to combat vitamin A deficiency .

Different methods employed to Nutrify Foods

Enrichment, restoration, and supplementation are additional methods that alter nutrient composition.

“Enriched” is sometimes used synonymously with “fortified,” although in the US it is a legal term that means a food must contain 10% or more of the daily nutrient value compared to the same nonenriched food.

Restoration involves adding back nutrients originally present before food processing; adding vitamins and minerals back to refined white flour s a familiar example.

“Supplementation” refers to any product designed to enhance nutritional intake and can take the familiar form of a pill (e.g., vitamin, mineral, herb, amino acid) or any other delivery vehicle (e.g., liquid extract, powder).

Supplements can be lifesavers, whether as infant formulas in places where breastfeeding is not possible or as complete nutritional shakes for those suffering from health conditions impacting appetite.

Conversely, some dietary supplements are expensive products with excessive nutrients that might either lack a solid research base or employ an ineffective chemical formulation. In the worst- case scenario, supplements may be adulterated or contaminated, creating a serious health risk.

While adding essential nutrients to foods to save lives still happens through nutrification efforts like fortification, today’s clever industrialists create copious multivitamin, multimineral products with (perceived) added value, from vitamin- enhanced waters to protein power bars and everything in between.

 Products like these are often referred to as “nutraceuticals” or “functional foods,” late-20th- century terms that describe the act of making food more nutritious to meet (or create) a consumer desire.

Yet other products load vitamins and minerals into foods without paying much attention to fundamentals like macronutrient composition, ingredients, and calorie content.

A Coca- Cola variant with added fibre comes to mind, as the 100% whole grain breakfast cereals loaded in sugar. There are thousands of these types of foods, and it’s not always clear that they “improve” diets; nutrition knowledge (and common sense) is needed to facilitate informed choices.

Thus, while many of today’s products are departures from the original intent of Nutrification to directly prevent or manage disease and save lives applications will continue to evolve, providing ever more options for consumers to create diets that meet diverse needs and lifestyles.

Why is Food Genetically Modified |Genetic Engineering in Foods

Do you know someone with diabetes who needs insulin? Chances are it was synthesized using genetic engineering (GE), like many other life saving medicines. Rennet (for cheese) is a collection of enzymes used in traditional cheesemaking produced by ruminants, usually calves but the majority is now synthesized animal free using GE.

Plants or animals in which genes have been altered using molecular biology and recombinant DNA techniques rather than conventional breeding are colloquially referred to as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), or, alternatively, GE or “biotech” crops.

Genetically modified foods are crops that have had specific genes altered or manipulated using techniques of genetic engineering. Traditional breeding mixes hundreds or thousands of genes at a time, but this happens over the course of generations. New technologies make it possible to target single genes and to transfer genes from one species to another unrelated organism, for instance, from bacterium to plant. Such changes cannot be achieved by conventional plant breeding.

 GE allows direct and specific changes to a plant’s DNA, ribonucleic acid (RNA), or proteins to create, express, or repress a trait rather than achieve the same end through conventional cross- breeding. In “transgenic” species, which receive the most media and consumer attention, genes from a different species are inserted. Yet adding a gene from the same species (cisgenic) and modifying a gene within the same species (such as turning it on or off) are also examples of GE .

Biotech foods  commercially available in the US , corn, soybeans, cotton, canola, alfalfa, and sugar beet (for insect and/ or herbicide resistance) ,papaya and squash (virus resistance); apple ( browning resistance); potato (blight resistance) ,and salmon (faster growth).

GE crops have been produced since the early 1990s and have been the subject of thousands of scientific investigations.

A gargantuan review of 1738 studies between 2002 and 2012 examined impacts on such factors as traceability, biodiversity, safety, and gene flow (into wild species, for example), finding no significant health or environmental hazards.

And a 2014 meta analysis of 147 studies found that GE crops reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22%, and increased farmer profits by 68%.

In 2016, a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report concluded, “While recognizing the inherent difficulty of detecting subtle or long- term effects in health or the environment, the study committee found no substantiated evidence of a difference in risks to human health between currently commercialized genetically engineered (GE) crops and conventionally bred crops, nor did it find conclusive cause- and- effect evidence of environmental problems from the GE crops.” These reports are consistent with those from governmental and nongovernmental agencies around the world.

Even so, many eaters oppose the use of GMOs— though they’ve been consuming foods made with them for years with no ill effects. While conversations related to food politics and ethics are vital like who owns the technology, how it is used, who benefits, who doesn’t, and why conflation with science has limited, and is still limiting, the use of a potentially life- and planet- saving technology.

Moreover, GMO anti- science distracts eaters from critical nutrition and environmental issues: focusing on the overall composition of the diet and the planetary consequences of food production, whether for weight loss, disease prevention, longevity, or sustainability, will have a far greater impact on individual lives and our collective society.

What is the Genetic Revolution, and how did it affect food production?

The act of selecting crops for desired traits has doubtless been around since the earliest days of agriculture, though as in so many cases throughout history the reasons for the effects (the mechanism, in science-speak) were unknown.

James Watson and Francis Crick’s 1953 discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA),which encodes our genetic makeup, revolutionized scientific disciplines across the board.

Food producers soon jumped on the bandwagon, and, in 1994, the first genetically engineered (GE) food came to market, a tomato bred to prolong shelf life and flavour through the addition of a second tomato gene that slowed rotting.

Despite this early effort to create a GE food that benefits consumers,  first- generation crops designed primarily for farmers and food producers dominated the following decades. In 1996, the first GE seeds designed to be herbicide- tolerant or insecticide- resistant (or both) were planted.

GE seeds were planted on 4.7 million acres in 1995, rising to 4.85 billion acres in 2015. They are now used in 28 countries worldwide, and the US, Brazil, Argentina, India, and Canada are the leading producers.

In 2016, the vast majority of US soybeans (94%) as well as corn and cotton (around 75% each) were made using biotechnology. On average, seeds have reduced pesticide and herbicide application use. Some GE herbicide- tolerant crops have led to the development of superweeds, which become resistant to the chemical initially used to kill it and hence more robust—though this phenomenon can occur whenever herbicide is used, including among non- GE crops.

A great many foods in contemporary diets depending on the country where you live and its legislation regarding biotechnology are made with soybean oil, corn syrup, and the like. As a result, humans have been eating foods made with GE ingredients since the late 1990s.

 At the same time, the second- generation GE crops, which are created with the consumer in mind, have been slow to reach the market due to public discomfort with biotechnology. Yet despite the heated politics and rampant junk science surrounding GE, the major health and science organizations in the US and around the world including the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United States (FAO), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), Center for Science in the Public Interest, and the Natural Resources Defense Council have all independently concluded that foods resulting from genetic engineering are no less safe than those grown using traditional breeding methods.

While each new crop requires individual safety assessment, the method itself does not appear inherently harmful. A newer technique called CRISPR ( clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, pronounced “crisper”) snips DNA at specific locations to remove undesirable traits, which enables faster, easier, and more precise modification without adding foreign genes.