An age-old link between food technology and health: Commentary
Writing in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Boston’s Children's Hospital, Dr. David Ludwig, said that adoption of new food technologies has had major implications for human nutrition and health – starting with the development of stone tools about two million years ago and the domestication of grains in about 12,000BCE.
Ludwig calls the introduction of stone tools, together with fire for cooking, “the first transformative technology”, which allowed diversification of the human diet and aided evolution. However, the beginning of agriculture, while greatly boosting available calories, also led to widespread protein and micronutrient deficiency diseases, Ludwig said – a trend that continued into the commodity-based diet of the Industrial Revolution and beyond, into today’s ‘ultra-processed’ Western diets.
“The tremendous variety of ultra-processed products marketed today derives predominantly from extreme chemical and mechanical manipulation of just 3 species—corn, wheat, and soy—and animals fed these commodities, representing a transformation from species diversity to product diversity of the diet,” Ludwig wrote. “…A diet based on ultra-processed products may promote obesity and chronic disease through a variety of mechanisms, including high energy density; large portion size; low content of fiber, micronutrients, and phytochemicals; poor-quality dietary fat; high glycemic load; and high-intensity flavoring.”
‘Ultra-processing’ is a term coined by Carlos Monteiro of the Center for Epidemiological Studies in Health and Nutrition at the University of São Paulo late last year, who suggested that the significance of food processing is often overlooked or marginalized in terms of its possible health impacts.
Importance of food processing
However, Ludwig said that food processing is a fundamental part of human culture and is likely to become increasingly necessary as the world’s population approaches seven billion. It has numerous benefits, including extending shelf-life, improving food safety, availability and transportability, among others.
In addition, Ludwig pointed out that processed foods such as refined flour, sugar and oils have been used for thousands of years as ingredients in diets that consisted mostly of minimally processed foods.
“The problem…is the creation of a dietary pattern based on factory-made, durable, hyperpalatable, aggressively marketed, ready-to-eat or heat foodstuffs composed of inexpensive, highly processed ingredients and additives,” he wrote. “Reducing the burden of obesity-related chronic disease requires a more appropriate use of technology that is guided by public health rather than short-term economic considerations.”
For the food industry, Ludwig suggested that ‘more appropriate use of technology’ might encompass using preservation methods that preserve beneficial polyunsaturated fats, using ingredients that have higher nutritional value, and marketing traditional, minimally processed foods, such as steel-cut oats or stone-ground bread.
Source: Journal of the American Medical Association
305(13):1352-1353. doi: 10.1001/jama.2011.380
“Commentary: Technology, Diet, and the Burden of Chronic Disease”
Author: David S. Ludwig
