Functional Foods: Fortification Versus Biofortification

❯ HEALTH & WELLNESS
FORTIFICATION STRATEGIES
Functional Foods:
Fortification Versus
Biofortification
What do consumers think about
adding health ingredients to unprocessed
animal-derived foods like milk, meat or eggs?
by Stefanie Bröring and Maria Vintulkina
R
ecently, the interest of EU consumers in healthy foods has grown tremendously, as a possible source to
improve the general performance of the
human body. There is no doubt that everyday diet plays a crucial role in building
up good health. With this purpose, functional foods represent a new category of
product development with their capability to fit into both the pharmaceutical and
food industries.
Generally, functional foods are related
to the products enriched with food ingredients like omega 3 fatty acids, prebiotics
and probiotics. The broader definition of
functional foods is defined by Diplock et
al. (1999), who describes functional foods
as: “a food can be regarded as ‘functional’
if it is satisfactorily demonstrated to affect
beneficially one or more target functions
in the body, beyond adequate nutritional
effects, in a way that is relevant to [...] an
improved state of health and well-being.”
Although the main focus of functional
foods are processed foods where functional ingredients have been added, nonprocessed animal-derived products like
milk, meat or eggs enriched with physiologically active components and health
a) Fortification
Feed
Livestock
benefits, like whey protein, omega 3 fatty
acids and others, also fit very well into the
above introduced definition (Goetzke,
2014, Hasler, 1998). But what do consumers think about adding health ingredients
to unprocessed animal-derived foods like
milk, meat or eggs? Are they still willing
to consume fortified foods or would they
rather switch their purchase decision towards products “free from” artificial substances added during the processing
phase (i.e. clean labeling)?
Fortification vs. Biofortification
Functionality of livestock products
can be achieved either through fortification during food processing or complex
biofortification processes, which will be
further discussed in more depth. Figure
1 shows that biofortification of animal
derived foods starts with the feeding of
cows with fortified, enriched with health
benefits feeds, whereas fortification process starts with adding of health ingredients during the food processing phase.
The process of fortification relates to
adding certain bioactive substances like
probiotic bacteria strains or (encapsulated) fatty acids during the food processing
b) Biofortification
Ingredient
Food
Processor
production phase. Originally, fortified animal derived foods cannot be perceived
as functional until certain bioactive substances will be added to them during
the processing phase. In general, milk
components are related to the class of
functional foods because of their ability
to prevent a number of possible diseases
like obesity, cancer, diabetes and some
other diseases. Health benefits of milk are
usually achieved by enriching milk with
different, often encapsulated, bioactive
substances or synthesized food ingredients. Fortification of raw milk with bioactive elements would be the strategy applied to reach the health qualities of milk.
Such products as yogurts, for example,
require incorporating additional ingredients during production process at dairy
level, without the necessity to change the
present cow feeding system.
By contrast, biofortification can be
reached through agronomic measures
(such as fertilizers, or feed), genetic engineering, or breeding approaches. In case
of an agronomic approach of biofortification, certain parameters of the end product’s quality (e.g. fatty acid composition in
milk) are influenced through the diet of
Retail
Feed
Livestock
Carry
over
Food
Processor
Retail
Figure 1: Fortification Versus Biofortification Supply Chain
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❯ HEALTH & WELLNESS
animal/ruminants and no bioactive substances are added
during the processing procedure.
Fortifying Staple Crops
The latest biofortification
research – mainly driven by
genetic engineering – focuses
primarily on staple crops like
sweet potatoes, lettuce or rice
enriched with beta-carotene,
zinc, iron and iodine. However,
the research on biofortification
with regards to animal-derived
foods still remains scarce. In
addition, a genetic engineering approach will not be applied to the process of biofortification of animal derived
foods in the short run, due to
regulatory constraints, as well
as limited societal acceptance
in Europe. In that case, agronomic biofortification (e.g.
through feeding) technique
has to be considered to alter
the nutrient composition of
animal-derived foods. What
benefits does this bring for
whom? It can be assumed that
cows fed with flaxseed, for example, to naturally enrich the
milk with CLA, would become
healthier. They will therefore
require less medical treatments and smaller amounts
of daily feed intake, due to the
health benefits of new feeding scheme. This could cause
a reduced CO2 footprint and
higher quality animal derived
Table 1: Fortified Food Products Versus Biofortified Foods
Food
a) Fortification
b) Biofortification
Farmer
Food Processor
Farmer
Food Processor
-
Food Supplement: vitamin A,
pudding powder to increase
zinc content
Genetically
Engineered: enriched
with Vitamin A
-
Rice
-
Micronutrient powder or spray
with vitamins and minerals
Genetically
Engineered:
enriched with Iron (Fe)
-
-
Food supplements:
vitamins A and D
Agronomic: Cow feeds
enriched with vitamins
and minerals,
Milk with a higher
content vitamins/CLA
-
-
Fortified with vitamin B2,
niacin, iron and zinc
Agronomic:
Pork feed enriched
with omega 3,
omega 3 pork meat
-
Milk
Pork Meat
SOURCE: INNOVA MARKET INSIGHTS
Sweet Potato
products. From this perspective, it can be supposed that
biofortification may be seen
as a new technology affecting
the perceived naturalness of
animal derived foods. Hence,
through biofortification the
process (lower CO2 footprint)
and the product quality (nutrient composition) might be enhanced.
Table 1 provides an overview of fortification of food
products versus biofortification process applied to the
same products. Five products
like yogurt, sweet potato, rice,
milk and lettuce are compared, in order to discover
the differences within the two
proposed production processes. The table represents
the stage at which the health
❯ Innocent (UK) now offers
“a super smoothie to help
your immune system,
with mango, pumpkin,
echinacea and flax seeds
and vitamins C, D and zinc.”
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❯ HEALTH & WELLNESS
ingredients are assumed to
enter the supply chain, e.g.
food processor in case of fortification vs. farmer in case of
biofortification.
Consumer Acceptance
With the growing intention
to live healthier, consumers
are also increasingly concerned about the foods they
are eating. Therefore, more
attention is put on the ingredients added to the foods
during the production process. A better understanding
of the food ingredients and
their health benefits increases
consumer awareness of those.
However, growing demand
for “natural” food production
(clean labeling) negatively
influences the consumer acceptance of fortified foods.
For example, the addition
of vitamin D to orange juice,
was shown to decrease the
perceived healthiness of the
end product, according to a
2013 IFIC Functional foods
consumer survey. With this
backdrop, biofortification can
be regarded as an alternative
micronutrient strategy positively affecting the production
process and the quality of the
product as the end effect. At
supply level, animal (i.e. ruminant) health and productivity
may be positively affected by
“functional feeds.”
A number of studies discovered the potential of biofortification as an alternative
micronutrient strategy (De
Steur et al., 2013). When micronutrient deficiencies occur
in one or another region, bio-
fortification may play a crucial
role to reduce the risks by enriching the most eatable foods
with required vitamins and
minerals (Chowdhury et al.,
2011, Meenakshi et al., 2012,
Oparinde et al., 2012, Banerij
et al., 2012).
However, it is still unknown
how the biofortification of
animal derived foods like milk
or meat, for example, will be
accepted by European consumers and whether such
products will be perceived to
be healthier and more natural than their fortified counterparts. Hence, biofortified
milk might be considered as
milk which improves not only
the health of the consumer,
health but also the milk which
is delivered from healthier
cows. Since such milk will be
enriched not only with one
health ingredient, but with the
complex structure of ingredients (e.g. vitamins A, B, C,
D, K, E), this could be a good
starting point, because of the
growing interest of EU consumers in functional foods delivered from healthy animals.
A Future Strategy
Generally speaking, biofortification can be seen as a future strategy which will get its
place on the market of functional foods. A potential target
group of biofortified animal
derived foods in EU may be
the elderly population, since
their awareness and concerns
regarding the foods they consume is higher in comparison
to the younger population
(Bornkessel et al., 2014).
According to the statistical
report, the EU elderly population will rise to account for
27% (World Population Data
Sheet, 2013) of the world’s
elderly population, which
means that this could be a
large pool for the integration
of biofortification techniques
on the EU food market. t
The authors Stefanie Bröring
and Maria Vintulkina work at the
Rheinische Friedrich-WilhelmsUniversity in Bonn, Germany.
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