health food

n.
A food believed to be highly beneficial to health, especially a food grown organically and free of chemical additives.

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Substances whose consumption is advocated by various reform movements, including vegetable foods, whole grain cereals, food processed without chemical additives, food grown on organic compost, supplements such as bees' royal jelly, lecithin, seaweed, etc., and pills and potions. Numerous health claims are made but rarely is there evidence to support these claims.

The importance of food to good health is one of the oldest and most significant notions in human material culture. Obviously people must eat or they will die, but the concept of ‘health food’ carries with it moral, religious, and even political meanings that go far beyond mere nutrition. For most people just getting enough to eat can be a struggle. But for those living beyond the margin, the selection of what one ought to eat or to avoid to recover or to preserve health is profoundly revealing of cultural attitudes and of the relationship of the body to what enters it.

The biblical book of Leviticus offered a daunting array of dietary restrictions to the Jews, embedded among other laws they had to observe in order to keep their covenant with God. Much later commentary on the lists of forbidden foods notes, for example, that prohibition of pork was done for ‘good reason’, because pork would have carried an unusual amount of disease. Such logic does not, however, apply to the prohibition of rabbit, for instance, and we must look elsewhere for a better explanation of these enigmatic documents. Leviticus itself suggests an answer. After promising his people a land of milk and honey, God continued:

‘I have made a clear separation between you and the nations, and you shall make a clear separation between clean beasts and unclean beasts and between unclean and clean birds …You shall be holy to me, because I the Lord am holy’(Leviticus 20: 24-6).

If God's people obeyed his laws, which included eating certain foods and avoiding others, they would enjoy a life of plenty and would be holy before the Lord. If they polluted themselves, they would lose God's favour.

Many cultures throughout history have observed similar restrictions. Adam and Eve were told to avoid apples, which they did not. The Pythagoreans shunned beans. Hindus do not eat beef and Moslems avoid pork. History offers numerous examples of pious Roman Catholic women who claim to exist on the wine and bread of the Holy Sacrament alone. ‘Health food’, in this sense, implies certain dietary restrictions that affirm a person's place in the social order and assure them that they are doing something that will keep them from bodily or spiritual harm. The more positive approach — that certain foods actually are better for one than others — also has a long history.

The ancient Greek science of dietetics embraced not only what one ate but also one's physical activity and emotions. Each person's diet was individualized according to gender, class, age, and occupation. Healthy food was food that was peculiarly suited to one's unique constitution or complexion. Food was essential to keep the bodily fluids in balance and to maintain harmony with the world of nature. In the Greek system, which dominated medical philosophy in the West until the seventeenth century, the distinction between food and medicine was never clear. A disordered constitution, one affected by fever for instance, could be returned to balance with temperate foods that would have a moderating influence. The body would require a long time to return to normal, however, and this sort of medicine never dealt very well with acute conditions. By the seventeenth century, more radical treatments, often chemical, came into fashion and the gentle, gradual, and individualized diet fell out of favour.

A returning focus on food came when scientists began to study diseases that were caused by deficiency of nutriments, required in tiny amounts, that came to be called vitamins. Scurvy, which was revealed as a problem by long ocean voyages, was identified and treated by eighteenth-century naval physicians. By the 1880s, beriberi and other vitamin deficiencies were being identified, and by the 1920s most major vitamins had been identified and supplements like cod liver oil were being recommended, especially for children.

‘Health food’, in the modern sense of what one might buy in a health food shop, has its immediate roots in the nineteenth century. In the US, new Protestant sects like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (1830) and the Seventh-Day Adventists (1861) avoid tea, coffee, alcohol, and tobacco, believing that the body, as the temple of the soul, must be protected.

vegetarianism in various forms is increasing in popularity even outside of religious groups. Many vegetarians avoid meat out of compassion for animals and because they believe animal products are unnecessary or unnatural. But some associate meat-eating with capitalism and the exploitation of the environment, and are making a political as much as a nutritional statement. The macrobiotic movement, which claims to have originated in mid-nineteenth-century Japan, returns to more ancient concepts of healthy eating. One popular regimen, lasting seven years, emphasizes cereal grains and the consumption of local and seasonal fruits and vegetables only, because only locally-grown produce can restore balance and harmony.

Popular interest in health foods is becoming more widespread, especially as scientists explore the importance of micronutrients in disease prevention. ‘Whole foods’ that have been minimally processed are recommended in the mass media as being more nutritious, as are ‘natural’ vitamins that are thought to be more complex and not chemically-produced. Health food restaurants and juice bars are no longer the sole property of fashionable parts of New York and California, and shops are crammed with ‘lite’ and ‘no-fat’ alternatives to butter, sugar, beer, and eggs. Health foods, ironically, are becoming less ‘natural’ and more ‘processed’ as science excites popular anxiety about proper nutrition and as eaters attempt to observe the rituals they think necessary for long life and good health.

— Faye Getz

Bibliography

• Bynum, C. W. (1987). Holy Feast and Holy Fast: the religious significance of food to medieval women. University of California Press, Berkeley.
• Cook, H. J. (1993). Physical methods. In Companion encyclopedia of the history of medicine, (ed. W. F. Bynum and R. Porter). Routledge, London and New York.
• Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. Routledge, London

See also cholesterol; diets; fasting; food; taboos; vegan; vegetarianism; vitamins.

The concept of "health food" is attributed to the 1830s Popular Health movement whose founders included Sylvester Graham, father of graham crackers. Reacting against professional medicine, the movement emphasized temperate living, lay knowledge and health care, and health foods as part of the broader feminist and class struggle. A simple vegetarian diet, including whole wheat, and exercise were promoted for physiological and spiritual reform to a more natural, uncomplicated life. Meat, white flour, and alcohol were among the stimulating sinful foods.

John H. Kellogg and his brother Will were the first to become millionaires from "food faddism" (Herbert and Barrett, 1981, p. 87). The Seventh-Day Adventists founded a religious colony and sanitarium at Battle Creek, Michigan, where Kellogg's clients "detoxified" via enemas and high-fiber diets, including cornflakes. By 1899, the Kellogg cereal company's cornflakes competed with Post Grape-Nuts, the latter a supposed cure for appendicitis, malaria, consumption, and loose teeth. Charles W. Post was a former Kellogg patient. Kellogg and the Post Division of General Foods remain giant cereal manufacturers.

While scientists quantified protein, carbohydrate, fat, and later the vitamin and mineral composition of food in the late 1800s and early 1900s, agriculture and industry augmented production. Public health sanitation and vaccinations minimized infections, and the increased stable food supply fed a growing population more fit to work the factories, farms, and military. As home economists taught the nutritional food groups recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), profiteers promoted grander elixirs via speeches, newspapers, books, magazines, and doctors, dentists, and chiropractors with dubious degrees.

Beginning in 1906, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) restricted health claims on food and drug packaging, but marketers could nevertheless exercise free speech by offering information in books, magazines, and brochures. Prevention and Let's Live magazines began publication in 1950 and 1933, respectively; the latter was initially called California Health News. They promoted vitamins, food preparation, and exercise and warned of pollution dangers. In the era of World War II victory gardens, Rodale Press began publication of Organic Gardening and Farming in 1942; this later became Organic Gardening and then simply OG. In 1980, Rodale Press grossed $80 million with 2.4 million Prevention and one million Organic Gardening and Farming subscribers (Herbert and Barrett, 1981, p. 99). Amway, Shaklee, and Neo-Life used door-to-door sales to distribute high-priced vitamins with brochures and books; in 1980 these three companies grossed about $700 million from food supplements (Herbert and Barrett, 1981, p. 22).

Health Food and the Counterculture

The 1960s and 1970s counterculture youth questioned the political and economic values of capitalism and experimented with alternative lifestyles. University students created community gardens, cooperative grocery stores, health-food restaurants, buying clubs, and organic farms. Ecology and health food became "cool." Notions of balance were sought from formerly less acknowledged ecological studies and from Eastern or Native American philosophies. In the early 1900s, USDA staff had explored sustainable Far Eastern agricultural practices, but these foods and methods received little attention until organic farming became popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Brown rice, wheat germ, honey, nuts, sprouts, and Eastern foods like yogurt, hummus, falafel, tofu, and stir-fried vegetables were considered healthy, and environmentally sound if they were produced locally and organically. Vegetarian diets, of the non-red meat, lacto-ovo, macrobiotic, and vegan varieties, were adopted to eat low on the food chain or to avoid killing animals. Sugar, white bread, and red meat were considered unhealthy.

The health-food business recognized a market in the counterculture. Adelle Davis, with books like Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit, promoted vitamins and natural foods to prevent psychological metabolic disorders as well as cancer. The Atkins Diet promised thinness through consumption of protein foods, fruits, and vegetables, but few carbohydrates. While exploring non-Western religions and cultures, youth tried ethnic foods, spices, herbs, and recreational drugs. While ethnic variety entered American cuisine, doctors bemoaned the fact that people were not seeking medical treatment but were using useless or harmful herbs and concoctions. Laypeople sought self-reliance over "the establishment" with traditional natural products to achieve holistic mental and physical health.

The professional certification of Registered Dietitian became required by many states in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1973, the FDA required enriched or fortified foods to be labeled with ingredients and Recommended Daily Allowance values for protein and seven essential vitamins and minerals.

Small-Scale to Global Mass Marketing

By the 1990s, as the counterculture matured, health-food issues saw compromise such as more integration of nutrition and preventative medicine in medical practice, or scientific evaluation of physiological properties in food beyond macro-and micronutrients. International conservation-development projects found wide use of herbal medicines to the extent that the World Health Organization promoted traditional medicine to cut health-care costs. The U.S. National Institutes of Health researched herbal medicine claims. A recent Physicians' Desk Reference describes herbal uses and contraindications. FDA food label regulations gradually permitted scientifically tested nutrient content claims (for example, "low-fat," "high fiber"), structure/function claims (for example, calcium aids in the growth and maintenance of bones), and a few health claims (for example, calcium reduces the risk of osteoporosis). In December 2000, the USDA defined national organic food standards to regulate health-food claims and to facilitate national and international trade. U.S. organic food sales increased from $178 million in 1980 to $1 billion in 1990 and $7.8 billion in 2000 (Mergentine, 1994, p. 164; Myers and Rorie, 2000).

Natural product sales (including whole foods, organics, supplements, and household products) grew from $1.9 billion in 1980, to $4.2 billion in 1990, and to $32 billion in 2000 (Spencer, 2001). Small cooperative health-food stores persisted, but large "one-stop" natural grocery stores opened in the 1980s and 1990s. Convenience attracted the "hippie" become "yuppie" professionals who retained health and environmental concerns but had little time to produce, obtain, or cook food. Mergers and acquisitions occurred as conventional food conglomerates bought out natural food product lines or whole companies. Regular chain grocery stores carried more organic foods besides conventional foods. The Internet provided both health-food magazine and retailer advertising as well as access to university and medical school websites. The Internet health-food market was initially profitable, but plateaued with delivery limited to nonperishables. Scientifically verified "functional foods" became popular, whether in regular meals, sports foods, or weight reduction. Consequently, antioxidants, fatty acids, phytoestrogens, flavinoids, pro-and prebiotics, are now promoted in a Functional Food Pyramid, mirroring the conventional USDA food pyramid adopted in 1992. Both nutrition education models acknowledge growing scientific evidence that fruits, vegetables, and grains are important to health, with lower emphasis on animal-derived food, compared to the Four Food Groups model used since 1958.

"Functional food," "designer food," and "nutraceutical" are used interchangeably. This is problematic in global trade regulation since food and drugs are compartmentalized differently in international regulatory agencies. Functional food is conventional food, but demonstrates physiological benefits and/or reduces the risk of chronic disease beyond basic nutritional functions. A nutraceutical is a product produced from foods but sold in pill, powder, and other medicinal forms not generally associated with food and demonstrated to have physiological benefit or provide protection against chronic disease (Stephen, 1998, p. 404). The American Dietetic Association classifies all food as functional at some physiological level, but suggests that "functional food" includes unmodified food as well as modified food. While some sports enthusiasts or dieters favor modified processed foods with higher nutrient content, many Americans and Europeans buy organic foods because they worry about allergic reactions and environmental hazards caused by genetic modification.

Bibliography

American Dietetic Association. "Functional Foods—Position of ADA." Journal of the American Dietetic Association 99 (1999): 1278–1285.

Belasco, Warren J. Appetite for Change: How the CountercultureTook on the Food Industry, 1966–1988. New York: Pantheon, 1989.

Davis, Adelle. Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit. Newly Revised and Updated. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 1970.

Dubisch, Jill. "You Are What You Eat: Religious Aspects of the Health Food Movement." In Nutritional Anthropology: Biocultural Perspectives on Food and Nutrition, edited by Alan H. Goodman, Darna L. Dufour, and Gretel H. Pelto. Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield, 2000.

Functional Foods for Health. Functional Food Guide Pyramid. Southern Illinois University/CFAR/University of Illinois Functional Foods for Health Program, 2000. http://www.ag.uiuc.edu/ffh/health/bw_pyramid.html.

Herbert, Victor, and Stephen Barrett. Vitamins and "Health"Foods: The Great American Hustle. Philadelphia: George F. Stickley, 1981.

Mergentine, Ken. "The USA Perspective." In Handbook of Organic Food Processing and Production, edited by Simon Wright. London: Blackie Academic and Professional, 1994.

Myers, Steve, and Somlynn Rorie. "Facts and Stats: The Year in Review." Organic & Natural News 12 (2000): http://www.organicandnaturalnews.com/articles/0c1feat1.html. Virgo Publishing, 2001.

Spencer, Marty Traynor. "Natural Product Sales Top $32 B." Natural Foods Merchandiser (June 2001). Available at http://www.healthwellexchange.com/nfm-online/nfm_backs/Jun_01/sales.cfm.

Stephen, A. M. "Regulatory Aspects of Functional Foods." In Functional Foods: Biochemical & Processing Aspects, edited by G. Mazza. Lancaster, Pa.: Technomic, 1998.

Whorton, J. C. "Historical Development of Vegetarianism." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 59 (1994): 1103S–1009S.

—Sabrina H. B. Hardenbergh; Hea-Ran L. Ashraf

For a list of words related to health food, see:

• Nutrition For Fitness - health food: any food considered healthful, esp. natural, unprocessed, or organic food
• Cuisines, Meals, and Restaurants - health food: natural or organic food with high nutritive value and low sodium or fat content, believed to promote good health

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