Pharmfoods' Feel-Good Claims: Form or Function?

In a new twist on hoop dreams, rising NBA star Ben Gordon of the Chicago Bulls announced last May that he had teamed up with the company H3Enterprises to develop BG7, an energy drink containing organic Chinese white tea--which the company says is naturally loaded with cancer-fighting antioxidants. The forthcoming drink is one of the newest products in the booming category of so-called functional foods or "nutraceuticals." For some dieticians, "functional" describes any food posessing health benefits beyond standard vitamins and minerals, explains Mary Meck Higgins, Ph.D., R.D., a professor of nutrition at Kansas State University. However, most companies and experts apply the term to foods containing added compounds with purported health benefits (see box).

"Functional foods tend to promise miracles, but I see them as about marketing, not health," says Marion Nestle, Ph.D., professor of nutrition at New York University and author of What to Eat? (2006, North Point Press, $30). Nestle, other nutrition scientists and even manufacturers are skeptical as to whether many highly processed functional foods are worth their price premiums. "I think there are some functional foods that make false claims, and that probably should be pulled from the market," says Timothy Donovan, CEO of ChocoMed, a functional food manufacturer. "There is a lot of what I call 'spa marketing,' in which products claim to be 'calming' or 'relaxing'-- things that make it hard to say what really might be going on." Yet the marketing is working: Functional foods have surged from 2.9 percent of U.S. food sales in 1997 to 4.8 percent in 2005. A 2000 study by the then-General Accounting Office projected the sector to reach a value of $49 billion by 2010.