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ANCESTRAL FOODS ® THE WHOLE FOOD PREFERENCE |
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The "Chemical Focus Of Attention" Approach The "Whole Food" or "Complex Food" Approach ANCESTRAL FOODS ® Represents The "Whole or Complex Food" Approach
About seventy years ago scientists began to discover and isolate vitamins from foods. Their chemical structures were defined, published, and later chemically synthesized. Since then researchers have continued their efforts to discover additional health-promoting food components. They have had notable success. For example, the benefits of soy isoflavones (in particular the utilizable forms Genistein, Daidzein, and Glycitein) are being further elucidated every year. Evidence suggests that other constituents of soy have beneficial effects as well. Another example is lycopene from Tomato. But note, when it comes to actually providing consumers with the wonderful nutrients and phytonutrients discovered by science, there are two almost diametrically opposed approaches. The "Chemical Focus Of Attention" Approach Consider these general points: a) Scientists do not know the exact molecular structure/three-dimensional configuration of food constituents as they originally exist in whole natural foods. Scientists must take food apart in order to chemically and structurally define its component parts. While doing that however, the "Life" or "Livingness" of the food slips away, allowing scientists to learn about the chemistry of the constituent focused upon for study, but not its vivacity. It's like finding a dead bird in the forest. One can strip away the flesh and focus on the skeleton for calcium analysis, but the test result will not reveal how the bird lived, what songs it sang, or what physical feats it could perform. b) Scientists want to define the specific chemical they are studying. They are more comfortable studying a known isolated chemical than a complex undefined food. If they suspect a food has a nutritional property, they want to know which specific constituent exhibits that specific activity, and so the food must be taken apart and the "chemical focus of attention" must be unattached (isolated) from its complex of other components (wether it works in unison or synergistically with those components or not) so that investigation may proceed. c) Scientists can not publish a study or receive recognition from their peers without being specific. For example, "A Fresh Pepper Promotes General Well-Being" won't even be published, whereas "Ascorbic Acid (derived from peppers) Prevents Capillary Fragility" may win a Nobel Prize. d) When scientists read chemistry textbooks to see descriptions of nutrients or food components that have already been isolated and identified, they find the chemistry of those specific components in isolation, without the complex "links" with other co-functional or synergistic constituents of the original food that nutrient was isolated from e) When chemists want to synthesize a vitamin or other nutrient component, they synthesize the specific published chemical. Chemists can not synthesize an orange, but they can synthesize ascorbic acid. That's like synthesizing a replica of the dead bird's skeleton, but not the whole bird. Naturally, after synthesis or isolation, marketing people "sell" that component and consumers "learn" to desire that component, perhaps without much thought of the original food. We are not passing negative judgment on this common process. In truth, there is little or no practical alternative. However, one can see how research efforts, manufacturing efforts, marketing efforts, and consequently consumer interest, can become focused on a particular chemical to the detriment of appreciating the values of (and benefiting from the potential superior functionality of) the original complex nutrient-containing food. It's like thinking "I have isolated soy isoflavones, so who needs the rest of the soy bean"? Or "I have isolated beta carotene and lycopene, so who needs the rest of the carrot or tomato"? But would you say "I have the skeleton so who needs the bird"? It is due to this prevailing mentality that products are often evaluated more on the basis of milligrams per serving of a particular chemical substance, than on considerations as to the "naturalness", "wholeness", "complex-stateness", or even presence of the original co-functional food matrix that Nature always provides with every nutrient. A mega-dose of a purified or synthesized chemical substance is not always the most desirable or effective form to consume. And of course the synergy and functionality of all the other nutrients and phytonutrients that would have been provided by the original food are absent. In order to increase the amount of marketable substances (to concentrate the "chemical focus of attention"), the other constituents of the natural food (for our example the soy bean or tomato) must be removed to a corresponding degree. In the case of soy, one step is to separate the proteins of soy from the carbohydrates and lipids of soy. There are a number of ways using chemical manipulation and heat to break apart the complex chains of peptides, saccharides, and fatty acids in order to end up with three products (isolated soy protein, modified starch, and lecithin) instead of one food. Washing with solvents such as hexane can remove residual fat. Another step involving additional washing is used to remove the isoflavone groups. The result is a concentrated product very high in isolated isoflavones, but virtually devoid of the "vitality" of the original soybean, since whatever useful or co-functional components were in the removed portions are gone. Now a nice high "competitive" potency can be put on the label, but the complex living bean has been reduced to a mere chemical. The "Whole Food" or "Complex Food" Approach For over fifty years, consumers shopping in Health Food Stores have believed in the nourishing and health-promoting properties of whole natural foods and herbs--products of Nature that have not undergone chemical partitioning, isolation, or de-naturation. The backbone of those consumers' belief and of the philosophy our industry had espoused for decades was a strong faith in the positive synergistic (or sparing, or co-functional) effect that all constituents (discovered or yet to be discovered) of natural foods have on each other and on our metabolism, working together in a mysterious but wondrous harmony for efficient and effective utilization and nourishment. In other words, "Food is more than a sum of individual isolated components". The destruction of that natural harmony and synergism by chemical alteration and partitioning (de-naturation of proteins for example) is not always easy to measure scientifically, but it was always suspected to ruin an important intangible nutritional value (like losing the song that a living bird can sing). It was not believed that Nature intended us to consume nutrients as separate bits and pieces of purified chemicals and isolates. ANCESTRAL FOODS ® Represents The "Whole or Complex Food" Approach Each product in the ANCESTRAL FOODS ® line is a nutritional powerhouse containing the full spectrum of nutrients and phytonutrients that Nature has designed that particular food to contain. |
Copyright
January 1999, Bio-Foods, Ltd., All Rights Reserved