Phood

Posted by ESC on July 01, 2004

PHOOD - Pharmaceuticals + food. Food "enhanced with nutritional supplements that promise a bevy of health benefits."

"WASHINGTON - The introduction of iodine to Morton Salt in 1924 was instrumental in eradicating a dangerous thyroid condition called goiter from the U.S. population. It was also the first time a food company purposely added a medically beneficial ingredient to food to help market that product.

Eighty years later, the food industry is intensively researching all kinds of other healthful ingredients it hopes to use to help sell otherwise everyday foods.

Functional foods, or "phoods" as they're sometimes called to connote the intersection of food and pharmaceuticals, have been trickling into supermarkets over the past several years - think of calcium-enhanced orange juice and cholesterol-lowering margarine, for example..."

From "'Phood' business re-energized/Savvy consumers eat up nutrition-laced cheese, juice, cereal" by Margaret Webb Pressler, Washington Post, June 27, 2004. Accessed July 1, 2004.