Solving Salt, Sweeteners, STECs and Other Puzzles

It’s an interesting time to be in food-product development. The industry is under pressure on many fronts: to make healthier food that keeps people from overeating, is good to the environment, is affordable and remains free of all those naturally occurring nasties lurking in every unsanitized corner.

Take simple salt. They say we’re all going hypertensive due to excess sodium consumption—not the extra weight, the unbalanced diets, or modern life’s daily dose of stress. Legislation might be looming to limit sodium in processed and restaurant foods and companies are devoting a great deal of resources to make palatable lower-sodium replacements. But what happens when research says, “If you build it, they won’t come”? The NPD Group recently released data that concludes, “Although the level of sodium concern is not as high as two decades ago, concern has risen in recent years, but the number consuming low-sodium/sodium-free foods has steadily decreased.” It’s like when you put out a nice tabouli at the neighborhood potluck, and watch people swarm to the fried chicken and frosted cupcakes. And so we search for solutions to lower sodium and deliver acceptable products.

Then there’s the high-fructose corn syrup controversy. Perhaps some magic component in HFCS makes us blow up like balloons compared to other sweeteners, but I’m waiting for definitive research that shows that effect. (Yeah, there’s that one mouse study. Repeat it without all the unknown variables, and we’ll talk.) But as enough strident voices call it a “chemical” and “poison,” and tell us a world without HFCS will be all butterflies and supermodels, the food industry is looking for alternatives to meet customer demand. Never mind the calories in/calories out equation and that, as a country, we’ve added 18% more calories to our daily diet over the last 30 years, while work and play have become increasingly sedentary activities. And so we search for the elusive palliative for the world’s sweet tooth.

Meanwhile, kindly Mother Nature is trying to bump us off with her microbial bag of goodies. In May, the nation learned a new set of numbers to add to Shiga toxin–producing (STEC) E. coli—O145—as the FDA announced a 23-state recall of romaine lettuce contaminated with that bug. It’s only a matter of time before its equally nasty STEC cousins O26, O111, O103, O121 and O45 come to the table with the same ferocity—and there’s more where they come from. Let’s not ignore their friends Salmonella, Campylobacter, Listeria, etc., either. Consumer demand for fresh, yet convenient, foods has given these organisms opportunity to cut a wider swath through the population. Yet, many believe raw milk is a good idea despite its microbial danger. And so we search for more ways to make food safer—and “chemical-free,” if you please.

Those are only some of the puzzles the food industry grapples with on a daily basis. Speaking as a food scientist, it’s nice to be needed, but the public needs to understand compromises are necessary for a cost-effective, healthy, good-tasting and safe food supply.