Put Some Green in Your Diet

Put Some Green in Your Diet

by Susan Colebank

Before the advent of synthetic vitamins and nutraceuticals, there were green foods. As early as the 1920s, manufacturers were marketing green food tablets as vitamins. Then people decided theyd rather take one tablet of synthetic vitamins, which were introduced in the 1950s, than 20 of green foods, said Ron Seibold, president of Pines International in Lawrence, Kan.

Although swallowing pills is not Americans favorite pastime, the increased sales of functional foods and beverages indicate they are trying to get their missing nutrients somehow, someway, but in a more palatable form. Green foodswhile being most commonly offered as super foods (i.e., powders that can be mixed with water for a daily fix)can easily be incorporated into todays functional foods and beverages, which is a blessing for the average American who still doesnt make his daily quota of fruits and vegetables. Since spirulina looks and tastes something like powdered spinach, food scientists and chefs are coming up with novel ways to integrate spirulina into foods that mimic fat, sugar and salt, but are healthy, said Ron Henson, vice-president of Petaluma, Calif.- based Earthrise Nutritionals. These include beverages, energy bars, healthy candy, cookies and frozen desserts.

Green foods fall into subcategories that include microalgae, cereal grasses, land plants, vegetables and seaweed. These green foods contain a component that sets them apart from the rest of the nutraceutical bunch: chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is the green pigment responsible for a green plants color, and is found in the cytoplasm of blue-green algae and the chloroplasts of plant cells. Chlorophyll is capable of trapping solar energyin the form of the red and blue of the light spectrumfor photosynthesis.

Not only are green foods rich in chlorophyll, but also vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, complete proteins (including amino acids), soluble and insoluble fibers, digestive enzymes, essential fatty acids (EFAs) and phytonutrients such as catechins and flavonoids.

Mitchell May, founder and chief executive officer of Moab, Utah-based The Synergy Co., said theres a large consumer movement back to green foods, since they offer nutrition that cant be created in the lab. Manufacturers who dont want to be caught in the flat sales trend that now defines our industry are seeking the whole-food ingredients consumers want, he said. From a financial perspective, green foods are one of the few growing sectors in our industry.

Two of the most popular forms of green foods are microalgae and cereal grasses. Under the classification of microalgae falls blue-green algae (aphanizomenon flos aquae, or AFA), haematococcus (from which astaxanthin is derived), dunaliella (red algae), chlorella and spirulina. Then there are cereal grasses, including barley, wheat, oat, rye and kamut.

Cereal grasses are the young grass of grain plants, a stage that occurs just after sprouting. The young grassbe it barley or wheatgrows slowly over the winter until it comes to the jointing stage, around March. The young grass grows in nutritional concentration during the winter in preparation for this jointing stage, when the ovule of grain begins its journey through the stalk to grow from microscopic size to about three to four inches, Seibold explained. The key to harvesting cereal grass is to capture the nutrition just before the ovule makes its trip. Then you harvest it, when it is 12 times more nutritious than something like spinach. However, there are only seven days per year, in the spring, during which the cereal grass can be harvested.

Green Applications in Foods, Beverages

Green food in juice form may seem the logical choice for beverage applications. However, the whole leaf is also more stable than the juice, since the juice begins oxidizing immediately. Seibold recommended using dehydrated whole leaf cereal grass in food and beverage applications since it provides not only the nutrition of green foods, but also the benefits of fiber. Drinking the juice is the same as eating white flourit does nothing to create bulk in the intestinal track, he said.

He added another problem is that some cereal grass juices are made from wheat grass that is forced to grow quickly in greenhouse conditions rather than the natural cold winter climate. Because it is grown so quickly in such an unnatural environment, it can also be dangerously high in yeast, mold and bacteria.

Beverages can also use a powder form. In a beverage, the powder must be soluble and dispersible so it wont separate out, May said. In a food product, solubility is not nearly as much of an issue, so green powders work very well. In fact, in a food product, you often need fiber to have other functional characteristics. If just juice powder solubles were used, their sugars tend to crystallize; however, fiber inhibits that process.

Spirulina, because of its particulate nature as a whole-algae powder, is more suitable for applications where a powder would work best, such as opaque drinks. Spirulina is popular in drinks such as flash-pasteurized fruit smoothies, with energy bars the second most popular application, according to Kelly Moorhead, technical sales director for Cyanotech/Nutrex Hawaii in Kailua- Kona.

Because of its rich profile of carotenoids, the water-soluble antioxidant phycocyaninwhich imparts the algaes colorprotein and the EFA gamma-linolenic acid all go into fortifying a fruit smoothie, she added.

Cyanotech/Nutrex is currently investigating ways in which its natural astaxanthin can be included in functional beverages, because it not only exerts antioxidant benefits, but also imparts a unique orange-salmon hue. Moorhead expects the sports nutrition beverage market will be a good fit for astaxanthin, which can be made into an emulsion used in low concentrations.

There are some challenges in terms of food and beverage applications. Most juices have to be pasteurized, so any ingredients a manufacturer puts in will also be heated for a certain length of time. Also, when making a food bar, they generally are heated during manufacturing. In their raw form, its difficult for green foods to retain their nutritive components. However, this is where working out kinks with a supplier comes into play. It is possible to process green food ingredients in ways that will increase their heat stability and shelf life, but it must be done properly, May said.

Formulators have the usual challenges facing natural products manufacturers when working with green foods. According to Moorhead, they must check for compatibility between ingredients during heating, color stability in environments its product will be in (such as a bottled product exposed to UV from store lights) and stability in terms of heat and time.

Its okay to have 40 or 50 ingredients in a product. However, if there are too many ingredients that are not of the super-food type, they may counteract each other. One important consideration when using ingredients such as EFAs is that, because of their oxidative properties, they can make the green foods in a product go rancid. Also, other ingredients with high moisture contents can make green ingredients lose their nutritive value.

Green foods losing their nutritive value is always a concern. For example, the timing between harvesting and drying is critical, since nutrients can get lost if not handled correctly. Many companies use freezedrying, which offers the benefit of imparting a bland taste to green foods. Other types of drying can cause green foods alkaloids to become very bitter tasting, May said.

Finally, when choosing a green foods supplier, find out if the company is in control of all aspects of its green foodsfrom harvesting to drying. Also, country of origin is another important question, since other countries use pesticides that are banned in the United States. And, foreignly sourced green foods may be irradiated, which can throw a wrench in an organic manufacturers product line.

According to Moorhead, synthetic astaxanthin from China has been represented as natural astaxanthin in the United States, and most foreignsourced spirulina can contain high levels of lead. She added the buyer should beware of astaxanthin that comes with low prices, since it may have come from a diluted synthetic origin or a highly unstable yeast form.

Besides their favorable attributes in fortifying foods and beverages, green foods hold another benefit: They are backed by science linking them to heart health, cognitive function, diabetes and even preventing viral infection. For example, spirulina can improve the physiological conditions of the membrane surrounding red blood cells, serum lipid levels and vascular endothelial cells,¹ and chlorella has been found to reduce blood pressure in hypertensive patients and increase quality of life perception.² Spirulina also has a significant effect on scavenging free radicals around the brain³ and has been found to control blood glucose levels and improve the lipid profile of Type II diabetics.⁴ Cyanovirin-N, an antiviral protein derived from blue-green algae, may inhibit Ebola infection, according to researchers at the National Cancer Institute.⁵ In addition, phycocyanin from blue-green algae has been seen to influence apoptotic death in cancer cells through free radical regulation.⁶ And astaxanthin, a carotenoid, has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, protecting the bodys tissues from oxidative damageparticularly that caused by UV light.⁷

In the realm of cereal grasses, the use of wheat grass (Triticum aestivum) juice for ulcerative colitis (UC) was investigated in a double blind, placebo-controlled study. Twenty-three patients diagnosed with active distal UC were randomly allocated to receive either 100 cc/d of wheat grass juice or a matching placebo for one month. Treatment with wheat grass juice was associated with significant reductions in the overall disease and in the severity of rectal bleeding.⁸ Research has also shown cereal grass can help fibromyalgia, which is characterized by unrestorative sleep, chronic pain, fatigue, inactivity and depression. Researchers gave 30 people a mostly raw, pure vegetarian diet, consisting of fruits, grains and a dehydrated barley grass product. Significant improvements were seen in 18 subjects in terms of shoulder pain at rest and after motion, flexibility, and a six-minute walk.⁹

Cereal grasses are also a great diet tool, according to Seibold. Its a low-calorie food, provides nutrition lacking in diets and creates a feeling of satiety, he said. Pines International supplies product to university researchers to grow friendly bacteria in lab settings. It creates an environment that produces the right kind of bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract, Seibold said.

And according to Henson, green foods is one of the easiest ways to get the Five a Day in fruits and vegetables currently promoted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Editors note: For a full list of references to this story,click here.