Today’s New York Times has a disturbing (for me, at least) article about the myriad ways that food processing companies are adding isolated nutrients to familiar foods. Orange juice, for example, will have omega-3 fatty acids from fish, minus the fishy smell and the other nutritional components naturally occurring in the salmon or sardines.
Wave of the future? Maybe. “Natural” food? Not to me.
See what you think:
Orange juice laced with anchovies is one example of the latest way major food companies are competing for health-conscious consumers: plugging one food into another and claiming the health benefits of both. Shoppers are offered green tea extracts in their ginger ale, yogurt bacteria in their salsa, and powdered beets in their peanut butter. Market staples like blueberries (high in certain antioxidants), cherries (may have anti-inflammatory benefits) and bananas (when unripe, particularly rich in fiber) are being broken down, shaken up, microencapsulated, and put to work in new ways.
Reductionism is the belief that the world can best be understood by breaking things down into smaller and smaller components. The mixing and matching at a molecular level that follows is believed by reductionists to be for the benefit of all.
As you have probably guessed, I’m not a big fan of reductionism. It has its place, but serves best when practiced in the context of holism, which emphasizes the integral nature of whole systems. From my perspective, this “functional food” fad is a step in the wrong direction. But this appears to be a train that has left the station.
