Designer Foods

Abstract

The concept of designer foods is clearly growing rapidly in the United States. There are now several meetings a year and almost all food industry meetings discuss designer or functional foods. The definition of these foods and the nomenclature is often somewhat ambiguous. What we will refer to as designer foods have been described by a wide variety of terms. Table 1 lists some of the terms that have been suggested to describe foods or fortified foods with disease preventative attributes. The term hyper-nutritious has been used to describe foods fortified with ingredients that take the food beyond what might be considered normal nutrition. For the purpose of this discussion I will use the term hypernutritious to describe foods that are supplemented in some way to improve their disease preventative characteristics. We will define hypernutritious foods as foods that have been augmented to provide preventative or health improving activity, specifically, with emphasis on ingredients or components with cancer preventative activities. The question then becomes should foods be supplemented with these bioactive materials, and if so, what and how should this be accomplished. Interest in these foods is coming from the consumer, the medical community and the research community.