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  Importance of foods|Low calorie food
Low calorie food
So – called functional foods, also known as nutriceuticals or food aceuticals, are becoming more and more prevalent in health food shops and supermarkets. A functional food can be anything from a chewing gum that promises to clean your teeth or give you a buzz to a mood altering drink made of guarana, a tropical herb. Importance of foods and the loaf of bread designed for menopausal women Is a prime example. Such custom – tailored foods for specific purposes will increasingly be on our supermarket shelves and in our corner shops. Many have been there for years, although not all their boasts are to be believed. The humble Mars Bar that promises to help you ‘work, rest and play’, the cereal that says it will keep you regular, the glucose drinks implying improved sports performance – all are, theoretically at least, functional foods. Fruits and Vegitables and smart foods and psychoactive drinks go a step beyond this because they fall into a category somewhere between food, dietary supplements and drugs. Whereas in the ‘80s the big thing was taking something away from foods, giving us a huge array of reduced fat crisps, sausages and spreads, decaffeinated coffee and low calorie drinks, in the ‘90s, and the millennium, the trends has been and will be to put something. Extra in foods so that they can be said to increase cognitive abilities, boost sporting or sexual performance or improve the immune system,. This has become one of the fastest growing sectors of the food market, worth $ 7.5 billion in America in 1991 according to a survey of American food consultants, and no doubt worth hugely more now Importance of foods and One major management consultancy. PA, with food industry clients set out to discover, in the early ‘90s, what European manufacturers could learn from the functional food phenomenon in Japan, where it originated.
Products on the market there included calcium enriched chewing gum with cinnamon to aid digestion, sports drinks with ‘electrolytes, iron and vitamins’, salad dressings containing Omega 3 fatty acids believed to lower cholesterol, and drinks and biscuits containing oligosaccharides to stimulate the growth of healthy bacteria in the digestive tract and possibility prevent cancer. Fruits and Vegitables and ‘Functional food is a marketing term rather than a technical one,’ an industry spokesman explains. Ginseng and guarana are frequently used, ingredients in so – called elixirs and tonics. One , called Gusto, contained two types of ginseng and was marketed as something that could’ strengthen the body’s ability to resist illness, degeneration and fatigue, and another called Mind Peak became a favourite with brokers and traders in the financial markets for its ability to keep them awake. Drinks with names such as Choline Cooler and Fast Blast have become commonplace, available from special supermarket coolers as well as from certain night clubs. London’s Brain Club was one of the first to specialize in these in the late eighties. Choline Cooler was said to be a memory improver; Fast Blast to provide a quick dose of noradrenaline, the body’s natural stimulant. Which? Magazine in Britain, which published a report, at the dawn of the ‘90s, on ‘Foods of the Future’, explained that the development of some of these foods grew out of research into Alzheimer’s disease, and the balance in the brain between acetyl choline and dopamine. Alzheimer’s victims have too little of the former and too much; it seems, of the latter. Fruits and Vegitables and many foods are natural mood foods such as chocolate, whose ingredients include theobromine to stimulate the nervous system and phenylethylamine which seems to improve the mood. But unpleasant mood changes can be brought about by cravings or vice versa, it seems. Everyone is calmer after a meal, but a meal high in complex carbohydrates seems to have the best effect. But if a meal is too calming, too full of refined carbohydrates and sugars. It can be soporific, leading to reduced performance at work in the afternoons, and falling asleep in front of the television at eight 0’ clock in the evening at home, with a feeling of lethargy. Learn, by trial and error, which foods are the right mood foods for you and listen to what your body tells you by the way it reacts. Health , beauty therapies, weight loss packages, skin care and hair loss preventive treatments – all under One roof – Shed extra flab and get the perfect fitness and start looking fantastic – why to struggle for years ? |
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