What's on your stethescope? - photo by pixel bunny
From WebMD, the ever-increasingly-popular, online resource, for-all-that-ails-you, comes an interesting article about food trends in 2008. No surprise, it all revolves around eating healthy.
- Food Trend No. 1: Eco-Friendly Foods
- "Captain Planet called, he's wondering happened to The Planeteers..."
- Food Trend No. 2: Local, Natural, and Fresh Foods
- Organic asparagus from Chile? Or, local asparagus... that have been sprayed? Hmm, so many choices these days.
- Food Trend No. 3: Concern About Food Safety
- Remember when spinach killed those people in 2006? (via cbsnews.com)
- Food Trend No. 4: Higher Prices
- Keith Collins, former chief economist for the Department of Agriculture, estimates that biofuels have caused 23 to 35 percent of the increases in food costs. (from nytimes.com)
- Food Trend No. 5: Prebiotics and Probiotics
- So don't forget to eat your yogurt and drink your kombucha or one day you may need a fecal transplant!
- Food Trend No. 6: Whole Grains
- Believe it or not but there is a Whole Grain Council fighting to standardize a "Whole Grain Stamp" for labeling in the marketplace.
- Food Trend No. 7: Simple Ingredients and Clearer Labels
- Clear Labels? Grams of fat? Americans don't know the metric system! It's no wonder we're fat! Why is food the only thing for which we use grams?
- Food Trend No. 8: Emphasis on Lowering Salt
- From cnn.com, "But the salt industry says that with the exception of a minority of patients with high blood pressure, there is no clear proof..."
- Food Trend No. 9: Alternative Sweeteners
- Isn't it funny how Sweet 'N Low in the US is made from saccharin (which is banned in Canada) and Sweet 'N Low in Canada contains cyclamate (which is banned in the US). - from www.commonground.ca
- Food Trend No. 10: Bottled Water Backlash
- From earth911.com, "In 2006, Americans drank about 167 bottles of water each but only recycled an average of 23 percent. That leaves 38 billion water bottles in landfills."
I hope soon that our society will begin to look beyond a minimalist approach to health; beyond just calories, grams of fat, proteins, carbs, and the % of RDA of vitimins A-E.
There is so much more. Polyphenols, flavonoids (or bioflavonoids), resveratrol, peptides! We are only starting to discover these because we had blinders on.
Take an apple for example, the FDA labels it as having potassium, fiber, sugar, 2% of Iron, 2% of Vitamin A, 8% of Vitamin C. Pretty meager really.
The breakfast cereal Lucky Charms chimes in with far more vitamins. Recent studies have finally isolated folic acid, quercetin, flavonoids, phytonutrients, and procyanidin are all contained within apples (these are good things).
We have known all along about what, "an apple a day" will do for you. We're just begining to learn why.