In 2018, diet-related chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and some types of cancer were responsible for half of all deaths in Germany, or around 1.5 million people. Worldwide, a study estimates that diet-related diseases are responsible for 11 million deaths each year, making diet the biggest risk factor for death.
Given the importance of nutrition and diet, it’s surprising to learn that research has shown that between 65 and 70 percent of all foods in a grocery store are nutritionally unhealthy. But it doesn’t have to be that way, and I want to change that.
We live in a world where exciting, new, all-natural ingredients are either being discovered or created. This is how Just Egg was able to develop an egg substitute from mung bean protein isolate years ago. If an ingredient needed for a particular taste or function doesn’t exist, today’s food scientists can create it. These new ingredients can provide the taste or function we’re used to in a healthier way. AI is and will continue to help develop knowledge faster than we can apply it to new products to make people and the planet healthier. That’s a clear conclusion from attending the IFT First conference, where 17,000 attendees had the opportunity to see ingredients from over 1,000 exhibitors.
The idea that food is medicine goes back centuries and is found in Western, Chinese and Indian (Ayurvedic) medicine. Mycotherapists, herbalists and naturopaths also viewed food as medicine. The natural products movement was based on the idea that the body has incredible healing power if you just give it food (organic, traditional, all-natural) to help it heal itself. Before drugs existed, food was an important medical approach to treating disease.
Medical foods have been around for years – foods specially formulated to meet the nutritional needs of patients with chronic conditions or diseases; intended for patients whose ability to ingest, digest, assimilate or metabolize ordinary foods is limited or impaired.
Dr. Stephen De Felice coined the term nutraceutical in 1989, a blend of “nutrition” and “pharmacy.” These are foods or food components that provide various health benefits, including the treatment and/or prevention of disease. A similar term is functional food, where the biologically active components of functional foods, when consumed regularly, can provide health benefits beyond their nutritional value. Consumer demands for healthier foods have contributed to the growth of functional foods, nutraceuticals, and dietary supplements. The difference is that dietary supplements have moved beyond their pre-scientific past and are now the subject of evidence-based, even double-blind, research.
Nutraceuticals 2.0 is similar to traditional drug development and in some cases involves life sciences companies using nutrition to deliver targeted therapy. Lylah LLC recognized the strong connection between the microbiome and heart disease and developed a therapeutic nutraceutical/dietary supplement.
Target conditions can range from gut health, i.e. pre-, pro- and postbiotics, to metabolic health, hormonal health, immunity, inflammation, energy, relaxation, recovery and sleep, to chronic diseases such as cancer.
Innovations in protein development, such as meat, chicken and seafood alternatives made from plants or cultured cells, are proof that we’ve come a long way since bean-based hamburgers. Yet the same kind of innovation is happening in nearly every food category. In addition to finding plants with specific desired properties in whole or in parts, we can now use techniques like precision fermentation to create the desired properties. Even if you ignore genetic modification and bioengineering, there’s plenty of innovation.
Much of the early innovation was driven by the need to shift from an animal-based to a plant-based food system to increase sustainability. At one point, the entire vegetarian/vegan market was valued at about $4 billion. Beyond Meat stated in its filings that the vegan meat market could grow to about $35 billion of the $250 billion domestic meat industry. The global plant-based milk market was valued at $35 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow to $123.1 billion by 2030. It’s possible that in the next 10 years, few of the products on today’s supermarket shelves will exist as they are replaced by more sustainable and/or healthier alternatives.
Food is the largest and most important social determinant of health. Food, or more accurately, nutrition, is the foundation. But it’s more than food, it’s also diet. Beer and onion rings can be all-natural and vegan, but they’re not healthy. For food as medicine to reach its potential, nutrition education and coaching must be available on demand and at scale. People need the equivalent of a board-certified dietitian they can consult to achieve a healthier lifestyle. Fortunately, this is possible through digital health apps that focus on nutrition and may include access to an RDN. There is so much misinformation and misleading information and bad food that it’s hard to navigate our food system. New ingredients, healthier products, and new tools like digital therapeutics and remote monitoring have the potential to lead to precise and personalized nutrition and medicine, with the desired outcome of better quality and quantity of life.
At Sunday Celebrations, we see an opportunity to disrupt the Standard American Diet (SAD), which is supported by a food system that has become a giant transmission system for chronic disease. With all-natural, minimally processed whole foods, a new class of evidence-based nutraceuticals, functional foods and supplements, new ingredients, innovations in food and nutrition science, and an improved understanding of the microbiome, we can and must replace most, if not all, of the bad foods on our supermarket shelves or that we eat outside of the home with healthier and more sustainable foods. We can move beyond using food as medicine to treat or manage disease to preventing diet-related disease in the first place.
The potential is so great that no one will have to suffer from a diet-related chronic disease anymore.
Ed Gaskin is executive director of Greater Grove Hall Main Streets and founder of Sunday Celebrations.
