Functional food: history of a `modern´ market segment

U. Spiekermann, Göttingen

Functional food has extended the food market, but it will not change daily diets fundamentally. In Germany functional food is no highflyer, the euphoria of the last years has gone. For a historian, this development was not surprising. The present paper concentrates on the symbiotic development of modern nutritional science and food production during the last hundred years. During this period the main goal was to optimize and rationalize nutrition.

Starting from early dietetic products which were mostly used in clinical nutrition, functional food was commercially available as early as more than a hundred years ago. While ‘artificall' products were not successful in the long run, ‘natural’ products gained more importance. Yoghurt was the first ‘new’ food, consumed because of a possible preventive health effect. Further milk products such as acidophilus milk, Bioghurt and Biogarde, demonstrate the persistent scientific efforts to create new functional food. The present paper gives more examples of fortified and vitaminized products showing that functional food is an ‘old’ market segment. Functional food has to be understood as an attempt to realize scientific and commercial hopes and dreams, to optimize health simply by eating specific food. The historical view elucidates faszination and limitedness of these concepts. Health is more complex than the concept of functional food suggests. EU05/02

Keywords: Functional Food / dietetic products / Yoghurt / acidophilus milk / fortification / vitaminization / history of nutritional science

Sie finden den Artikel in deutscher Sprache in Ernährungs-Umschau 05/02 ab Seite 170.