Expert advice to finding health-enhancing food

Research, technology and widespread interest in nutrition have sparked an explosion of health-promoting foods. Supermarket shelves are filled with foods created to boost health and longevity.  To categorize an ever-evolving genre of health-promoting foods, a number of terms have been coined by the food industry. Here are a few that you should know about.

Many grain-based foods, such as bread, flour and cereal, are commonly "enriched" with certain nutrients — ribo­flavin, thiamin, folate and iron. These essential nutrients are lost during processing and are added back into the food in varying amounts after it has been pro­cessed. Note that whole-grain products possess superior nutrition to processed grains since en­richment does not replace all the nutri­ents lost during pro­cessing. Another category of enriched foods is omega-3-enriched eggs. Hens are given a feed supplemented with omega-3s to produce a heart-healthy version of the traditional egg.

Certain foods are fortified with nutrients not present in the original food to boost protection against chronic disease or to help prevent a nutrient deficiency. Milk fortified with vitamin D, iodized salt, folate-fortified wheat products, calcium-fortified orange juice and cereal fortified with vitamin B12 are well-known fortified foods that help to prevent nutrient deficiencies.

Functional food refers to any food that promotes health beyond satisfying basic nutrition needs. The term reflects the growing number of en­hanced foods available to us and does not carry a scientific or legal meaning. Falling into the category of functional foods are "nutra­ceuticals," "pharmafoods," and "designer foods," all of which are promoted as imparting a particular health or medicinal benefit, including the pre­vention and treatment of disease. Genetically modified foods (see below) fall into the category of designer foods. Unen­hanced foods with natural disease-fighting properties (such as garlic or tomatoes), as well as enriched and fortified foods, are also considered functional foods.

These are foods whose genetic makeup is altered in an effort to produce a new plant with more desirable characteristics, such as increased resistance to spoilage or improved nutritional content. Consid­erable controversy surrounds genetically modified foods, as long-term health and environmental effects and ethical issues are not resolved.

Organic foods are grown and/or processed without the use of such syn­thetic chemicals as pesticides, herbicides, pre­servatives, growth hormones and antibiotics. The benefits of organic foods are not clear-cut. Although organic fruits and vegetables may be more flavourful and colourful, their nutritional value has not been established as superior to non-organic fruits and vegetables. Also, many organic foods tend to spoil faster and organically-grown fruits and vegetables may harbour harmful microbes, such as E. coli, due to organic methods of fertilization. On the other hand, some experts maintain that certain organic meats have a healthier fatty acid content compared with conventional meat.

Food and marketing are always evolving. Understanding what is meant by the terms on food labels will help you get a leg up on what is best for your body.