Functional Foods (Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment)

Food Science & Nutrition · Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment Functional Foods are being introduced into society at a particularly sensitive.
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International Journal of Food Microbiology.

Food and health: individual, cultural, or scientific matters?

Journal of Dairy Science. Food and Bioprocess Technology. Journal of Food Engineering. Journal of Functional Foods. Food Packaging and Shelf Life. Food Quality and Preference. Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology.

Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies. Current Opinion in Food Science. Food and Chemical Toxicology. Journal of Cereal Science. Journal of Food and Drug Analysis. Foodborne Pathogens and Disease. Journal of Food Composition and Analysis. Journal of Nutritional Science. Or, to choose as a final formulation, health is the bodily and mental state of a person such that he or she has the ability to realize his or her vital goals, given standard or otherwise accepted circumstances Nordenfelt , A distinctive feature of such a concept of health is that it refers to the subject him or herself.

The healthy person is the person who can realize his or her vital goals, not vital goals in general. This may sound like a problem for the universal science of medicine. Should we acknowledge individual variations? Do as many health concepts exist as there are people? In fact, one definition is suggested in one brief formulation.

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However, it pinpoints the relational nature of the health concept. Health for people is a relation in which they stand with regard to their abilities, goals, and circumstances. As a consequence, we cannot just identify health with abilities tout court. We must also look into the vital goals of the subjects and reasonable circumstances in the environment in which they find themselves.

Such a notion of health is promising with regard to personalized nutrition since it relates health to individual preferences. Different features of an individualistic, holistic theory of health are of relevance. By its very idea, personalized nutrition addresses health as the primary concept.

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But this presupposes a self-conscious patient or consumer who is able to articulate his or her vital goals and preferences with regard to health. Researchers and providers of personal nutrition should therefore devise a strategy to inform and discuss with patients or consumers the implications of their vital goals and health preferences.

Furthermore, an individualistic notion of health is a reminder of the possibility that people with high levels of vital goals benefit more easily. To reach beyond these groups remains a challenge. This is by itself not a problem for personalized nutrition as a potentially valuable tool for better health among certain groups of people. However, because of this potential injustice, personalized nutrition should be endorsed realistically with respect to its potential as a method not to replace but complement more global preventive programs.

The latter should remain an essential but not necessarily completely obligatory objective of society. The above examination of discourses about food and health took as its point of departure the circumstance that food within personalized nutrition is a tool for good health and that this implies an instrumental relationship between food and health. By highlighting cultural dimensions of food and arguing for a holistic and individual concept of health, we have pointed at the complexity of the two concepts of food and health. From an ethical point of view, an integrative approach, which treats the cultural and scientific perspectives as complementary rather than mutually exclusive approaches, appears adequate.

Two central ethical challenges may consequently be identified for personalized nutrition in relation to concepts of food and health, including cultural and value-laden aspects. First, with respect to food, personalized nutrition may benefit from an approach that not only considers the interaction between nutrition and health risks , but also takes into account implications of the cultural meanings of food.

Since the intake of food is determined not just by knowledge about the individual impact of different nutrients on health, but also by social conventions and cultural frameworks, research on personalized nutrition should explore in greater depth the interaction of the two perspectives on food. Individually tailored nutritional advice should not be restricted to information about recommended amounts of nutrients or nutrients that should be avoided.

Further investigation should address the following questions.

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How does increasing health information on food products and through personalized nutrition services influence food consumption of different groups of consumers? How does more widespread awareness of scientific knowledge about health effects of different nutrients affect cultural food traditions? The objective of personalized nutrition thus cannot be standardized. People should therefore be expected to have different interests and different goals or levels of ambition with regard to promoting their health.

Since health is related to vital goals, the objective of health promotion may also change with time. Thus, a holistic and individualized health concept implies an ethical challenge to personalized nutrition to take into account and respect individual differences regarding the objective of health promotion.

This examination of the discourses about food and health and the discussion of their ethical significance for personalized nutrition have thus resulted in a view that advocates an integrated understanding of food and a holistic concept of health as the most supportive for personalized nutrition. This raises the question, how social and cultural concepts of food and holistic concepts of health are related to the aim of individualization in personalized nutrition.

The individualizing aim of personalized nutrition is based on the increasing understanding of individual differences regarding health effects of food intake. As the scientific understanding of the interaction between food and health with regard to genetic variation and the influence of different nutrients on the expression of the genome grows, personalized nutritional advice seems to provide a significant complement to population based nutritional advice.

The vision of personalized nutrition is thus to provide individuals with personalized dietary advice in order to optimize means of health promotion. Social and cultural concepts of food and holistic concepts of health seem to provide a basis for an important modification of the individualizing aim of personalized nutrition. In combination with each other, they highlight a view of the individual and the social or cultural as intertwined. An integrated concept of food emphasizes the individual as part of a social and cultural context. It also stresses scientific aspects of individual differences regarding food intake.

A holistic concept of health emphasizes the need to differentiate individual ambitions and preferences from general, biostatistical definitions of health.

Altogether, individualization appears in these concepts as an aim to be strived for within social and cultural concepts. The aim of personalized nutrition is thus supportive of a view of the individual as embedded in social and cultural contexts. As a consequence of its individualized approach, personalized nutrition should be seen not as a substitute but as complementary to more global preventive programs.

It is, for instance, impossible to make a phenomenological analysis of the typical case of illness without paying attention to suffering. For full-fledged and penetrating such analyses, see Toombs For an interesting attempt to amalgamate the notions of disability and suffering, see Van Hooft This study was conducted on behalf of the Food4Me project. For overall correspondence regarding the Food4Me project: National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Journal List Genes Nutr v. Published online Mar Received Nov 9; Accepted Feb This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

Abstract In personalized nutrition, food is a tool for good health, implying an instrumental relationship between food and health. Personalized nutrition, Ethics, Food, Health. Scientific and cultural approaches to food The emergence and development of the life sciences has brought about changes in our understanding of nature and thus also of food. Food as culture Falk pointed out that the eating community and the meal are the basic foundation of all societies. Food as relation Food is a medium that creates bonds between people Belasco and Scranton , p.

Functional foods / R. Chadwick [et al.] - Details - Trove

Food, body, and identity The moment of eating is one of the rare moments when our body is open. Food and power At various levels, food is power. Integrating scientific and cultural perspectives on food Food cannot be reduced either to biology or culture since it is vital at the very same time to both the individual human organism and the building and maintenance of social relations: Biostatistical and holistic concepts of health Contemporary philosophy of health has been quite focused on the problem of determining the nature of the concepts of health, illness, and disease from a biological and medical point of view.

Significant features of the holistic theory of health Health as the primary concept Most medical treatments focus on the negative aspects of health—either disease or illness. The primacy of ability and disability Two kinds of phenomena have a central place in holistic accounts of health and illness: Individualistic notion of health A distinctive feature of such a concept of health is that it refers to the subject him or herself.

Conclusions and challenges for further ethical analysis The above examination of discourses about food and health took as its point of departure the circumstance that food within personalized nutrition is a tool for good health and that this implies an instrumental relationship between food and health. Conflict of interest None. Footnotes 1 This conclusion does not deny the extreme importance of pain and suffering. The sexual politics of meat: Through the kitchen window. Women writers celebrate food and cooking.

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