Professorial Lecture Series

"What makes food functional?"
Professor Linda Tapsell

Wednesday 30th May 2007 (12:30-1:30pm), Location: 20.2

If you missed the lecture - please note recordings are available

We hear a lot today about the health benefits of foods and the growing body of science that describes the activity of food components. Food is also implicated in chronic disease management such as diabetes and heart disease, it emerges in debates on economics and trade and is central to the culinary arts. In this presentation I will draw on the breadth of expertise represented in the National Centre of Excellence in Functional Food to discuss the position of food in science, health, commerce and the arts, to address the question - what makes food functional?

Food has always been essential to survival, but modern science has enabled the 'mining' of its secrets to uncover a multitude of compounds with activity defined through carefully designed experiments. These compounds have been classified, and in some cases purified and commercialized. Supplements enabled consumption in higher doses to support nutritional adequacy. Today, however, we know a lot more about food itself. We know that food components interact with genes to turn on and off cascades of events that produce and sustain the human biological system. We are beginning to appreciate the food matrix, one that delivers compounds in functional groups designed to support the survival of the organism consumed as food, (whether plant or animal). In many ways it is a prime example of the 'the more we know, the more we realize we don't know', but this makes the scientific challenges all the more engaging.

Moving from the microscope to the health of the population presents a different type of challenge. Translating knowledge from one level to another demands discipline and an appreciation of the rules of methodology that enable scientists, practitioners and the general public to make sense of what each other is saying. In this context it is important to keep in mind two things: scientific frontiers are just that - 'they' are always refining old ideas, or making new discoveries (so things change and we need to keep up), and science by nature is not absolute ( so we must work on a risk assessment model based on best available knowledge). The jig-saw puzzle this creates is also very engaging.

On another scale food can lie at the heart of economic development. It is important to the Australian economy, for example, and for our food companies to survive they need to produce food that is not only healthy but looks good and tastes great. And so we arrive at food and nutrition as art.

What makes food functional? We do - by eating it and benefiting from the nutrition it provides - nutrition exposed to us through scientific investigation, explained to us by practitioners, adapted for us by food producers and made beautiful by culinary artists.