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note: In the MNC world, health maintenance, prevention, and nutrition are still unknown, and quite frightening. |
To the befuddlement of scientists and regulators, many of the largest food manufacturers are lacing their products with the active ingredients found in dietary supplements and traditional herbal medicines, some of which may not be effective or even safe.
Major brands like Snapple now promise to "enlighten your senses" by brewing herbs like ginkgo biloba into bottles of iced tea. Celestial Seasonings urges consumers to steep away their stresses with kava, a sedative root from the South Seas now found in its Tension Tamer cocktail.
Even Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble are working on fruit-flavored tonics to soothe the pain of stiff knees for aging Baby Boomers by adding glucosamine, which helps build cartilage. PepsiCo's SoBe beverage line offers elixirs containing such herbs as St. John's wort, appealing to New Age enthusiasts looking for Wisdom and Karma, as the drinks are called. And Dannon is working on a new superyogurt billed as enhancing the immune system.
'HEALTH' DRINKS
Herbal medicines, which used to be chalky pills sold in health food stores, are now sold in a rainbow of juices and snacks. Now marketed heavily by the nation's food makers, they are found not only in select niche markets but in the coolers of every supermarket and convenience store in the nation.
The market for functional beverages -- drinks that promise health benefits beyond their inherent nutritional value -- has nearly doubled in the last four years, from $2.68 billion in 1997 to $4.7 billion in 2000, according to Frost & Sullivan, a market research firm. Sales of functional foods have followed suit, rising from $11.91 billion in 1995 to $23.4 billion last year. Both categories are expected to grow by at least 20 percent this year, according to Frost, offering a serious lift to the food industry, which has been a bit listless of late.
Many of the herbs and other substances in the new products have never been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as allowable additives. Yet because the agency has not sought to ban them, food companies have the right to add them to their products.
Agency officials said that they have not meddled with most products because there have been no reports of consumers being seriously hurt by them.
"There's a gray area here," said Dr. George Pauli, an FDA food safety official. "There's no reason that we would expect any acute reactions. What we're more concerned about is if people consume this over their lifetime, will it eventually catch up with them?"
In a report in July, the General Accounting Office criticized the FDA for providing "limited assurances" of the safety of functional foods.
Moreover, if consumers had been hurt by any such foods, the FDA might never know about it, the report said. Food companies are not required to disclose that information. Under the law, they need only determine, to their own satisfaction, that the ingredients they put in foods are safe.
Unlike the many herbal medicines that contain the same ingredients, the new drinks rarely carry recommended doses on their labels, or what concentration of the extract of a given herb was used.
"For substances that cause physiological effects, there is sometimes a small margin between an effect that is safe and one that is harmful," Pauli said.
Drawing on decades of scientific research, companies have long been bolstering drinks and foods with vitamins and minerals, ever since the advent of vitamin-enriched white bread and fortified milk. But the new additives have been introduced with only a meager understanding of their efficacy and side effects. Many products make it to market well before any definitive studies on their ingredients have been conducted.
Some scientists, lawyers and critics have noted that the big companies have been adding herbs in such low doses that they probably pose no risk at all. But that also casts doubt on how effective they are.
"I would argue they are putting one over on consumers either way," said Henry I. Miller, a fellow at the Hoover Institution and a former FDA official.
SoBe Lean, a Pepsi-owned drink, boasts on a product tag that it "acts like liquid liposuction." Made from the rind of garcinia cambogia, a pumpkinlike fruit with a questionable reputation for promoting weight loss, the product supposedly suppresses the appetite and inhibits the body's synthesis of fat.
Initial steps taken by Coke and Pepsi into nutraceuticals, as the new foods and beverages are called, could not have been more different. Pepsi acquired the South Beach Beverage Co. in October. Since then, it has brought such drinks as SoBe Adrenaline Rush, which contains the stimulant guarana, into dozens of new markets, hoping to attract the college crowd in search of a late- night lift.
On the other end of the spectrum, Coke formed a partnership with Procter & Gamble earlier this spring. The companies are now preparing to introduce a drink called Elations, promising to ease the aches and pains of the nation's aging population. Each bottle contains 1,500 milligrams of glucosamine, a dietary supplement that has long been popular among people suffering from arthritis. A study published this year in the British journal Lancet suggested that glucosamine slowed cartilage erosion, and Elations is being tested in Cape Coral, Fla., under the slogan "Joy for Joints."
'YOUTH IN A BOTTLE'
Douglas N. Daft, Coke's chief executive, has depicted Elations as the equivalent of youth in a bottle, and hopes it will eventually become available in every gas station, supermarket and convenience store in America.
"Baby Boomers don't want to grow old," Daft said. "They're looking for the very thing that will help that desire, something that will make the joints ache a little less."
P&G officials insist that sound science distinguishes Elations from the many herbal concoctions currently on the market. Still, some scientists worry that glucosamine could elevate blood sugar levels in diabetics. A warning label on Elations bottles advises diabetics to talk to their doctor before using it.
The National Institutes of Health is conducting a four-year study on glucosamine. But neither Coke nor P&G felt they could afford to wait for the results.
The big food and beverage companies have generally stayed away from the additives that most concern scientists. But even the ingredients they do use can cause problems. Studies have shown that St. John's wort, for example, reduces the efficacy of nearly 50 percent of medications.
And some scientists and government officials are worried that many smaller companies are adding far more dangerous supplements to drinks.
A number of less common teas and sports drinks contain ma huang and guarana,
a combination that some scientists say could in rare cases lead to permanent injury or death.
In 1998, Shane Garrett, a 21-year-old dental lab technician, drank a bottle of Ripped Force, a drink containing both ingredients, and then started working out. Thirty minutes later, he went into cardiac arrest, leading to permanent brain damage that left him with no short-term memory and the intellectual capacity of an 8-year-old, according to his lawyer. The drink, sold at gyms and the GNC chain, sells under the slogan "thunder through your workouts."
Garrett has sued the manufacturer of Ripped Force, Weider Nutrition International, which declined to comment because of the litigation. "It's marketed like a sports drink and consumed like a sports drink," said Andrew W. Hutton, Garrett's lawyer. "But it is dangerous."
Scientists note there are also potential problems with drinks that contain less dangerous stimulants, such as guarana, a natural form of caffeine, or sedatives like kava, both of which are found in SoBe and Snapple drinks.
In California, San Mateo County prosecutors brought charges against two motorists last year for driving under the influence of kava tea, prompting a consumer products trade group to warn that the calming root can make drivers drowsy. One case ended in a mistrial after the jury deadlocked; charges in the other were dismissed by a judge who cited a lack of evidence about the tea's effects.
Some experts argue that as larger companies enter the market, momentum will build to describe in more detail the contents and suggested doses of functional foods. Nevertheless, the very notion of mixing medicines into foods is anathema to some purists.
"It's appalling," said Varro E. Tyler, a professor emeritus at Purdue University who specializes in botanical medicines. "We don't put Viagra in soup or Prozac in oatmeal, and we shouldn't put in these other medications in snack foods."
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