The search for new Asia Pacific 'superfoods'
Updated
It's claimed superfoods are better for you than "ordinary" fruit and vegetables. They are supposed to be able to make you smarter, slow down ageing, or help prevent diseases like cancer and diabetes. The list includes blueberries, garlic, green tea, strawberries and barley, and right now, they are big business.
Presenter:Corinne Podger
Speakers: Brad Stafford, juice exporter; Steve Pratt , California-based author; Dr Bruce Fife, founder of the Coconut Research Centre in the US; Professor Choudhury Mahmood Hasan, Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research
PODGER: Search for superfoods on the internet and you'll find all kinds of weird foods and supplements - and a barrage of enthusiastic claims about their alleged benefits:
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PODGER: So what makes a food "super"? Steve Pratt is the California-based author of the best seller Superfoods Healthstyle:
PRATT: Well, it has to be readily available, it has to be found in cuisines found around the world that are considered healthy cuisines, such as the Mediterranean diet, the traditional Asian diet or the traditional Japanese diet. There also have to be a lot of peer-reviewed studies on that food showing that it does indeed have benefits in people, and it has to have longevity-enhancing nutrients in that food.
PODGER: Dr Pratt says that list doesn't include expensive supplements and tablets, which is good news for consumers.
PRATT: Every superfood's stood the test of thousands of years. They were good for people 2000 years ago, they're good for people now, and they'll be good for people 2000 years from now.
PODGER: But there's no legal definition for a "superfood". Manufacturers don't need to prove they're somehow better than other foods. Some can be toxic if you eat too much, while others can counteract medication you might be taking.
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PODGER: So what about superfood contenders from our region? We'll start with noni juice. It's originally from South Asia, and is grown in several Pacific states including Tonga, Hawaii and French Polynesia. Marketers say it's been used for centuries in the Pacific as an immune system booster, but very little research's been done to back that up. Nevertheless, Cook Islands Noni Juice is the country's largest agricultural exporter, making around a million US dollars a year. The managing director is Brad Stafford.
STAFFORD: We've conducted research in China with a company that found after taking noni juice for 14 days, it actually boosted the immune system by more than 50 percent.
PODGER: Mr Stafford acknowledges more research is needed on noni, and doesn't market the juice as a cure-all for serious diseases like cancer. He says it should be treated as a daily health tonic.
STAFFORD: If it works for you, it'll work for you. Too many people nowadays pitch their whole belief structure that this is going to work for them, and what ends up happening is that they end up getting depressed and upset because it hasn't worked.
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PODGER: Next in our region's superfood race are coconuts. They're full of saturated fat - which is out of fashion right now, so they've been ignored by big food research agencies for many years. But some research has been done, and it's being painstakingly collected by Dr Bruce Fife, founder of the Coconut Research Centre in the US.
FIFE: Probably the major thing with coconut, and the one that has the greatest amount of research to back it up is coconut oil's anti-microbial effects, its ability to kill disease-causing bacteria, and viruses and fungi. The oil's in the form of a tri-glyceride, and when we eat it, it breaks it down into individual fatty acids or fat molecules, and these fat molecules possess these anti-microbial properties.
PODGER: Dr Fife says he hopes the studies on the benefits of coconut oil will be picked up and run with by a big manufacturer - which would be good news for Asia-Pacific producers. At the far end of the research spectrum in our region is Jarul Tea from Bangladesh. Rigorous lab tests on tea from Jarul leaves has shown it helps people with non-insulin-dependent or Type 1 diabetes, to process sugar. The research was done by the Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research - its chair is Professor Dr Choudhury Mahmood Hasan.
CHOUDHURY: The leaves of this plant are used for treating diabetics for many, many years in our country. What we have done actually is that our scientists collected the leaves of this plant, and the plants are dried and then they went through the so-called clinical trials - I mean animal trials, not clinical trials as such - and they are using it in the form of tea, we call it diabetic tea.
PODGER: He says any so-called "superfood" should undergo rigorous tests, especially if it's to be used to treat or prevent disease. But he says Westerners should also accept some natural foods, like Jarul, have built up a body of evidence over centuries that's equivalent to clinical tests.
