Functional Foods as Commodities

Though notoriously hard to define, this entry adopts an understanding of functional foods as food products marketed for their health benefits. This definition includes products as diverse as calciumfortified orange juice, omega-3-enriched eggs, and cholesterol-reducing margarine. The concept of functional foods encompasses both the application of nutritional science and technology to the development of food products and ingredients designed to deliver certain health benefits and the unprecedented level of marketing of food, nutrition, and health required to promote the concept (Heasman and Mellentin 2001). It is closely tied to the ability of manufacturers to make direct or implied health claims on product labels and in advertisements, an area of global regulatory friction. Market actors, not public authorities, drive the development of such products. While functional food commodities may reflect public health priorities, they are not developed as part of public health policy (Holm 2003). Conventional nutritional wisdom holds that there are no bad foods, only bad diets. A good diet includes variety, balance, and moderation and is one component of determining health on both an individual and population-wide basis. Functional foods challenge this understanding of the relationship between food, diet, and health. Further, functional food science blurs the boundary between drugs and food by proposing the use of technologically altered foods in disease treatment and prevention. Critics suggest that functional foods represent an understanding of the food supply as a commodity rather than a public health resource (Holm 2003). Such concerns illustrate that the regulation of how functional food products are developed, distributed, and marketed is a global public health issue. This entry begins with a discussion about the contentious definitions of functional foods. It then traces the historical development of technological foods, from early fortification initiatives to the current market for nutritionally oriented products. Functional foods are situated within the social context of medicalization and individualization of public health and the political context of deregulation regarding the use of health claim. Criticisms from both public health and ethical perspectives are discussed, and prospects for the future development and regulation of functional food products are evaluated.