What is food?

The advent of the Nutrition and Health Claims regulations came about because there was concern amongst regulators and politicians that products were being sold in the European market with health claims that were false or unable to be substantiated by science. From that moment on regulators made it clear that in their view food is not a medicine.

A medicine is defined as a drug or other preparation for the treatment or prevention of disease. Over the past fifty years the pharmaceutical and retail industries have developed a readily available selection of drugs for minor ailments that keep us away from doctors. Pills or a course of anti-biotics have become part of life as the means to allow us to carry on with our lives without being troubled by minor illnesses.

Food therefore has become a means of providing the fuel to keep us going. Product nutritional detail is angled towards basic dietry characteristics. Some staples then try to improve their ability to provide more for us by being fortified with vitamins and minerals. Vitamins and minerals are accepted as being good for us, and the fear that food does not provide all it should has developed a massive industry in the supply of supplements. So what drives this fear. We are continually told by agencies and health professionals that we must eat five a day – fruit and vegetables to have a healthy diet. People do not like being preached to as to what is good for us. The pace of modern life and the distractions that it offers do not always fit with a daily habit of three meals of cooked food. Processed/ pre-prepared foods provide the opportunity to reduce everyday routine tasks improving lifestyles or allowing work to fill longer hours.

Food has become a “have to” function as opposed to a necessity; a family affair; a social opportunity; or even dare I say it – the means of keeping healthy.

As farmers we produce the commodity food staples that go to processors to be converted into food products. These products are controlled by regulators to have labels that tell the consumer how well a product will go to providing a “healthy” diet. But for all this we have a country with almost 62% of the country’s adults defined as obese and frighteningly 28% of children also in that category. It has been said this week that this could be the first generation where there is a risk of children dying before their parents.

We also have a government that is having to enforce regulation to make hospitals provide food that is good for patients. I find it staggering that diet has so little appreciation in the NHS as to its potential to influence health.

The concept that food and health are connected seems to have drifted apart. Food can be bad for you we are told time and time again. Too much salt; too much sugar; too much of the wrong sorts of fats; – all negative attributes. Eating a food item because it is good for you might indicate that we are afraid that we might have an illness. Anyway one could say that it is irrelevant whether food is good for you, because we cure our illnesses with pills.

It seems that food has become disconnected from being the natural way to keep your body healthy. It is no big deal. It is just a fact that food that has the right nutrient profile, when eaten with a range of other foods to provide a balanced diet has a good chance of giving you the best opportunity to be healthy. That means healthy without taking supplements.

But of course there is a view that says that modern agriculture is not geared to producing commodities to have widely beneficial nutrient profiles. The way that food passes off farms into the food supply chain does not check nutrient levels at the farm gate. That is the processors job, and if the processor finds the product wanting then the product will be fortified with vitamins and minerals to make the consumer feel they are getting a good deal.

But going back to the Nutrition and Health Claims regulations – one of the reasons why so many applications to have health claims accepted by EFSA have failed is that the research that backs up a claim does not go far enough to prove benefit. Research needs to include detailed and repeatable clinical trials. Clinical trials are the accepted process when testing pharmaceutical – but these tend to be based around single active ingredients.
Food products from natural sources do not include single active ingredients – they are built up of multiples of complex phytochemicals all working in synergy to interact within the human body. Food is grown in the natural environment in which the weather is an ever-changing variable. Soils; plant varieties; management techniques all go to providing a totally inconsistent manufacturing process. From one year to the next; from one farm to the next food product are created but the variable that influence them will ensure that the nutrients within them may have the same profile, but not the same concentration. So from all this, it is not surprising that one cannot prove whether a food product is good for you by scientific means alone.

Having said that some agronomy systems may be able to improve nutrient production better than others, but the economics of farming is such that a more critical view of the production of food nutrients is not valued – in the same way as the NHS seems not to value it either.

But against all this there is nutritional science that identifies the physiological connections between the body; diet and the biochemistry within the nutritional value of food. These are inter connected and this knowledge is not new. So although the European Food Safety Agency may not agree that there is a cause and effect reason why many food can provide benefits, we all know that good food is nutritious and a good diet helps to keep you well.
So if that statement is real then food is as good as medicine, and we should start to value it as such.
The problem with health is that you never value it until it is threatened.