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| CSIRO | SOLVE | Issue 5 Nov 05 | |
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ARTICLE
FOOD FUTURES /
PREVENTATIVE HEALTH: Take Three Times a Day By Rebecca Thyer
Learning more about what we eat is increasingly being seen as a key to fighting chronic disease. Six years ago the idea of lowering cholesterol levels by spreading margarine on your bread was quite novel. However, Anglo-Dutch food giant Unilever changed consumer and medical perceptions with the launch of its cholesterol-fighting Flora® pro-activ®, which is enriched with plant sterols that help reduce the absorption of cholesterol from the gut. It is an example of what lies ahead. Functional foods are foods that can provide a health benefit above and beyond basic sustenance. This already includes fruit juices enriched with calcium, bread enhanced with omega-3 oils, or foods that actively fight against diseases such as diabetes.
Both are working to use food to tackle the developed world’s three major chronic diseases – colorectal cancer, heart disease and neurodegenerative diseases – plus other areas such as satiety, which could help reduce obesity levels. Dr David Topping, a CSIRO senior research scientist, explains that the developed world’s refined diets mean the body absorbs foods extremely efficiently. Organs like the colon can miss out on necessary bacterial activity – thus the need for foods (like some beans) with resistant starch that can escape digestion and pass into the colon to be broken down by resident bacteria. The fermentation of resistant starch in the colon can lower the potential risk of colorectal cancer associated with high-protein/low-carbohydrate diets. “But the intake of resistant starch in Australia, the United States and other advanced countries is low, so we are working to develop new high resistant-starch grains and foods,” Dr Topping says. The Food Futures Flagship’s director, Dr Bruce Lee, says that food’s particular health attributes will become even more important in the future. “Foods will be directly linked to health benefits and consumers will be conscious of eating foods that are helpful to them.” Protective foods stream leader with the Preventative Health Flagship, Dr Lynne Cobiac, says the right foods might be able to stop the ‘switch’ that turns on bowel diseases. Preventative Health aims to identify classes of potential food that will promote health and decrease the incidence of colorectal cancer, cardiovascular disease, inflammatory diseases and neurodegenerative disease, while Food Futures plans to have resistant starch-based products on the market in the near future. The influence of food on health has always been recognised, but the evolution of modern biochemistry has enabled scientists to explore the role of food in tackling chronic diseases, says Professor Richard Head, Preventative Health director. For example, CSIRO has access to a range of powerful life science technologies, such as DNA microarrays and proteomics, that produce considerable data, and advanced bioinformatics to make sense of it. It also has a multidisciplinary capacity to apply this knowledge broadly across the spectrum. Dr Cobiac says that analysing the interplay between an individual’s diet and genetic make-up and the combined impact on health is taking nutrition into new territory. “If we can understand what impact nutrients have at the molecular level – at the level of DNA and protein – then we can understand the role of nutrition and how we can improve our health.” To combat chronic diseases, such as colorectal cancer, her team is looking for natural bioactive substances. These may also be relevant to other areas such as high blood pressure or inhibiting the take-up of cholesterol or its synthesis in the body. “Bioactives already occur in fresh fruit and vegetables, grains, dairy foods and meat, but in very small amounts. So we’re taking a rational, strategic approach to characterising and identifying them.” Food companies such as Unilever and Masterfoods Australia New Zealand are also exploring opportunities in this research field. Masterfoods’ technical affairs manager, Dr Roger Bektash, says his company, for example, is looking at cocoa flavanols, natural ingredients in cocoa that have been shown to improve circulation and heart health. “We’ve long recognised that foods have benefits beyond basic nutrition. But we now have the technology that can make linkages and understand their role in preventing disease or improving health performance.” The economic benefit of using food to improve health has also been picked up by the medical establishment. Professor Finlay Macrae, head of Melbourne Health’s Colorectal Medicine and Genetics Department, says: “The old adage that it is better to prevent than cure is hard to argue with and functional foods fit in with this theory.” Recognition of the importance of the interaction between food and health is also growing internationally, reflected in CSIRO’s sponsorship of the International Life Sciences Institute’s first international conference on nutrigenomics – ‘Opportunities in Asia’ – in Singapore in December. “The conference shows that there is an increased interest in foods at the molecular level,” Dr Cobiac says. APPLICATION The development of ‘functional’ foods provides health benefits above and beyond basic sustenance
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CSIRO began researching the influences of food biochemistry in the 1960s and nutritional sciences in the 1970s. This work paved the way for present activity by its Food Futures and Preventative Health Flagships.
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