When is food functional

Is food fuel, pleasure, medicine – or all of the above?

Food is something we all engage with multiple times a day, yet defining what it is or does becomes surprisingly complex the moment we try to pin it down. Is food simply fuel? Is it pleasure? Is it medicine? Or is it all of these at once, depending on context and intent? Over the past decades, the concept of “functional food” has tried to capture this blurred boundary between nourishment and targeted health benefits.

Back in the days my executive boardmember at a large Dutch dairy cooperative strongly opposed against the term functional food.  According to him dairy would qualify as functional food already.  We adopted the term enhanced nutrition internally instead and did launch various concepts such as fortified milks  and probiotic yogurts

Looking back you could wonder if enhanced nutrition is a correct name. Isn’t nutrition per definition enhanced when compared to food, and hence enhanced nutrition a tautology? What is actually the difference between food and nutrition? Does food become nutrition when it is fortified? And as a consequence functional? All food is (should be?) nutritious to a certain extent, but are all nutritional products considered food? Are food supplements different from nutraceuticals? 

It’s a jungle maybe but for sure food is emotional, social, and cultural. Today, we can also add commercial and even political dimensions to that list. From that perspective, I would argue that food is always functional. Even fast food or comfort food has a function (a chocolate bar after a long day “functions” very differently from a probiotic yogurt or a protein shake), but above and beyond all food is personal. It is what you (want to) get out of it.