Functional foods are food products or ingredients that offer health benefits that go beyond just their basic nutritional value. Functional foods don’t just provide us with the fuel we need to survive; instead, they actively promote well-being and can even help to prevent and manage certain diseases.
Examples of functional foods would include oily fish that’s rich in omega-3, bread that’s been fortified with added folic acid, probiotic yoghurts, fermented cabbage, and a range of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds which are naturally rich in vitamins, minerals, fibre and bioactive compounds which can improve our health.
Learn more about functional foods, how they can support better health and which functional foods are the most powerful in our companion article.
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The traditional approach to addressing nutrient deficiencies in our diets would be to take a supplement – but functional foods are rapidly becoming a more popular alternative to supplements for a few very important reasons:
Supplements often isolate an individual vitamin, mineral or bioactive compound into a pill, delivering a high dose of that specific nutrient. In contrast, functional foods contain a complex mix of natural nutrients and compounds.
This means functional foods naturally act like a multi-supplement, delivering a wide variety of health-boosting nutrients in one go without needing to take multiple different pills to achieve the same effects.
In addition, studies have found that the natural cocktail of nutrients and compounds found in functional foods work together in synergy in our bodies. This means functional foods are often more effective at supporting health in our bodies than supplements that contain just the isolated ‘active’ ingredients.
This may be because our bodies have evolved to capture the health benefits of these natural, often plant-based foods, whereas synthetic supplements are less effective.
Nutrients found in foods and eaten as part of a meal are often more ‘bioavailable’ to us than supplements. This means our bodies are better able to absorb more of the nutrients, and so take more benefit from functional foods where bioavailability is higher.
Again, this is likely because our bodies have evolved to unlock and absorb nutrition from our food, rather than from supplement tablets.
Unlike taking a pill, functional foods are often also rich in protein or dietary fibre. This means functional foods can form a valuable part of your daily diet, helping to provide your body with the energy and nutrients it needs alongside delivering vitamins, minerals and active ingredients.
Functional foods can appear at first glance to be more expensive than supplements. However, since they deliver a wider range of nutrients, those nutrients are more bioavailable to and effective in our bodies, and they can form part of healthy and filling meals, functional foods often represent better value than traditional supplement tablets.
While both supplements and functional foods can deliver health benefits, it is slowly becoming clear that there are significant risks associated with taking supplements that are avoided with functional foods, such as:
In most countries, supplements and the companies that produce them are not strictly regulated. Suppliers do not have to prove that supplements are effective before selling them to customers, and studies have shown that unregulated supplement tablets often contain a much lower dose of nutrients than they claim to on the label. Worst of all, since the products are tablets, consumers have no way of telling if this is the case.
In contrast, functional food products are regulated under the same rules as other food products, and since these plants naturally contain the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients you’re after, you can rest assured you know what you’re getting.
Manufacturers of supplement tablets don’t have to prove their tablets are safe before selling them to customers. As a result, studies have found that unregulated supplement tablets are often tainted with harmful contaminants (such as heavy metals) which can actually contribute to diseases like cancer.
In contrast, functional food products are regulated under the same rules as other food products, ensuring they are safe and produced according to strict standards. As a result, customers are protected when eating functional foods in a way they are not when taking supplements.
Many vitamins, minerals and other nutrients which are good for us in the right amounts can actually cause us harm or even become toxic in high doses. For example, scientists caution that taking too much of vitamins A, B3, B6, C, D and E can all be harmful. The same goes for minerals, with iron, magnesium, zinc, selenium and phosphorus all potentially toxic at high levels.
Since they are artificially concentrated into pills, supplements can sometimes deliver too high a dose of specific nutrients, leading to nutrient imbalances and even damage to your body. In contrast, functional foods are made from naturally-occurring crops and so contain healthier, more moderate doses of nutrients that support your health rather than undermining it.
There are some situations where supplements are a better choice than functional foods. For example, for people with severe allergies or who must eat very restrictive diets, functional foods may not be suitable and supplements may be a better alternative for balancing their nutrient intake.
However, in most cases functional foods are a more effective, healthier and more natural choice for most people looking to improve their health by supplementing their diet.
We’re obsessed with broccoli here – so you might think we’d be fans of broccoli-based supplements. But we’re not really – for a few reasons:
Broccoli really is an under-appreciated vegetable. It’s a powerful source of a wide range of bioactive botanicals, including sulforaphane, quercetin, kampferol and indole-3-carbinol/diindolylmethane (DIM).
Plus, as a bonus broccoli also contains vitamins C & B6, folic acid, potassium, phosphorous, iron, selenium, manganese, protein and dietary fibre – so it’s a multivitamin too!
These nutrients all work together to have a powerful positive effect on our health. However, besides being potentially unsafe, broccoli-based supplements often extract just one of these active ingredients, making them less effective than eating real broccoli.
We’ve spent decades researching and developing our new ultra-healthy strain of super-broccoli (or as the scientists call it, ‘GRextra’).
It looks and tastes like a traditional supermarket broccoli, and contains all the same vitamins, minerals and fibre – but delivers up to 5x more key bioactive botanicals than a standard broccoli.
As a result, each serving of our super-broccoli is like taking 10+ supplement tablets!
It’s a uniquely powerful functional food which combines the power of a pill with the safety, effectiveness and broad health benefits of a plant. It’s the best of both worlds, without any of the downsides.
Ultra-processed foods have been linked to more than 30 different health problems, including heart disease, cancer and anxiety. But what actually are ultra-processed foods, and why is everyone suddenly taking about them?
The concept of a “superfood” might sound simple – a food that’s really good for your health. But in practice, the term has no scientific or regulated definition, so it is open to interpretation – and sometimes abuse.
TV chef, presenter, former Masterchef contestant, award winning author, and SmarterNaturally’s in-house recipe wizard Theo Michaels shares his story and reveals why he teamed up with us in this exclusive interview.
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