Consumers ready for positive health foods, conference told

After years of being bombarded with negative health messages, such as cut out fat, cholesterol and sodium from the diet, consumers are ready for foods which emphasise positive nutritional attributes, an international food science conference has been told.

The market for this new generation of healthy foods is of such potential that the Irish food and pharmaceutical industries can no longer afford to ignore them, the conference in Cork was told yesterday.

More than 300 scientists who are designing and developing new foods claimed to have a positive effect on health are attending the conference, hosted by the farm advisory and research body, Teagasc.

The concept of what are officially described as "functional foods" is particularly strong in Japan, where they receive official support. Japan's licensing system permits some food products to be advertised as conferring health benefits.

Official support is based on a likely long-term reduction of health care. "With an ageing population worldwide, governments are extremely concerned about the future costs of their health services," according to Dr Barry Connolly of Teagasc Dairy Products Research Centre in Co Cork.

These foods have the potential to promote health in ways not anticipated by traditional nutrition science, according to Dr Mary Ellen Sanders, a US dairy and food technology consultant. Functional food success in the US had related to "efficacy and safety, but equally important for success is a product targeted towards an issue consumers care about", she said.

While Japan is the only country with a licensing framework permitting overt advertising of functional foods, many such products are coming onto US and European markets. Functional foods are the logical follow-on to healthy foods, a market which began with low-fat products and has continued with additive-free and fortified products, fuelled by growing consumer interest.

The best known functional foods have been bifidus yoghurts, a dairy product fortified with bacterial cultures with tangible health benefits for the human gut. Consumers are familiar with the term antibiotic - a substance eliminating pathogenic bacteria in the body - but the functional food sector includes "probotics"; in effect the opposite. Probiotics are, essentially, good bugs benefiting the body, while prebiotics offer a good environment for probiotics to thrive.

"The European market for probiotic cultures has seen a trend towards increased numbers of dairy products containing probiotics. These are marketed with the strategy of improving general gut health, lowering blood cholesterol, or improving the body's natural defences," Dr Connolly said.

Estimates of the worth of the US market in functional foods is $13.4 billion. The European market is beginning to follow similar growth patterns. The current British market is in the order of $2 billion.

Growth is set to be particularly strong within the dairy sector, which is facilitating the production of a new range of healthy ingredients such as lactic acid bacteria, various protein units known as peptides and conjugated linoleic acid, which are highly effective in disease prevention but can also act as anti-cancer agents in some cases - details of a probiotic cheese being developed in Ireland are to be outlined at the conference.