The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that major food companies are taking a new approach to identifying the next big diet fad – they’re actually trying to create it.
The target: creating foods that will make people feel full even when they are not.
The reality of food trends is that “big food companies often are late comers to diet fads, which tend to bubble up through popular books and personal recommendations,” even though “diet foods are one of the faster growing areas of the otherwise slack food business.”
An example of what’s happening in produce development: “Scientists at Unilever, which is based in London and Rotterdam, are betting on a technology four years in development that focuses on something called the ‘ileal brake mechanism.’ The ileum is the lower part of the small intestine, an area that fat penetrates only when there is too much for the body to process. When it does, the ileum sends a message to the brain that the body is full. Unilever found a way to alter the structure and the coating of fat molecules so that they remain intact as they pass through the digestive system and trigger a sated response when they hit the ileum.”
Or, the WSJ writes about how Danone researchers have “applied for patents on special types of fiber that slow the rate at which food travels through the digestive system. The fiber delays ‘gastric emptying,’ which is food's voyage from the stomach to the intestine, and encourages ‘gastric distention,’ or the stretching of the stomach. Combined, that makes people feel full longer. The tricky part is not to block their systems entirely.”
The target: creating foods that will make people feel full even when they are not.
The reality of food trends is that “big food companies often are late comers to diet fads, which tend to bubble up through popular books and personal recommendations,” even though “diet foods are one of the faster growing areas of the otherwise slack food business.”
An example of what’s happening in produce development: “Scientists at Unilever, which is based in London and Rotterdam, are betting on a technology four years in development that focuses on something called the ‘ileal brake mechanism.’ The ileum is the lower part of the small intestine, an area that fat penetrates only when there is too much for the body to process. When it does, the ileum sends a message to the brain that the body is full. Unilever found a way to alter the structure and the coating of fat molecules so that they remain intact as they pass through the digestive system and trigger a sated response when they hit the ileum.”
Or, the WSJ writes about how Danone researchers have “applied for patents on special types of fiber that slow the rate at which food travels through the digestive system. The fiber delays ‘gastric emptying,’ which is food's voyage from the stomach to the intestine, and encourages ‘gastric distention,’ or the stretching of the stomach. Combined, that makes people feel full longer. The tricky part is not to block their systems entirely.”
- KC's View:
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We hate it when there’s a tricky part.
Now, we have no problem with any of this, and will be perfectly happy to eat foods that will make us feel fuller than we actually are.
But we read phrases like “alter the structure and the coating of fat molecules so that they remain intact as they pass through the digestive system and trigger a sated response when they hit the ileum” and wonder how the anti-GMO crowd will respond to this kind of product development.
