Superfood: Healthy, wealthy and wise
superfood — itself a marketing term for food claimed to confer health benefits resulting from an exceptional nutrient density — an amalgam of science and ideology. It is science because nutritional research establishes cause and effect, and continues to do so in greater detail. It is an ideology when fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds have to be carted halfway across the world to deliver a specific health benefit.
Most of the nutritional value available in a specific superfood is equally available in local food. Besides, food is an extremely globalised industry, with fairly uniform supply within limits imposed by geography and climate. A big chunk of the fruit and vegetables grown in most countries have been imported at some point in time.
This makes marketing the next big thing in food a risky proposition that lawmakers tend to frown upon.
But they have reason to do so. Most nutritional research is funded by industry bodies, which renders the claims less authoritative. Extracting ingredients of interest from a vegetable and raising its concentration wades into pharmacological territory, but flies below the radar of drug testing.
Processing a superfood for its intercontinental journey reduces some of its primary and definitely most of its secondary, and possibly undetected, benefits. Finally, manufacturing demand for seaweed from Japan, chia seeds from Mexico or kale from Europe requires needless proselytising.
There is, however, an urgent need to restore traditional food such as millets in modern diets. This calls for marketing on a scale beyond that dictated by commercial interests.
