Innovative Food

The innovative dream that has been suggested is to have food that tastes good (hamburgers, chips, milkshakes, etc) that has zero calories – and most importantly also has no side effects. Will that ever be possible?

There have been two attempts to create no calorie substitutes for real food – one for sugar and one for fat.


Some examples of sugar substitutes are saccharin, aspartame and sucralose. Saccharin was approved by the FDA in 1958; Aspartame was approved by the FDA in 1981 and Sucralose (sold as Splenda) was approved by the FDA in 1998. Saccharin had at one time been linked to bladder cancer, but the effect was only in male rats and not in humans. Aspartame had similar associations with brain tumors, but has since been cleared and approved for human consumption.

Olestra is the fat substitute developed by Proctor & Gamble in 1968 and it has no fat and no calories. But the side effects of Olestra are abdominal cramping and loose stools that became known as “anal leakage”. The other side effect of Olestra was the blocking of the absorption of some vitamins and minerals.

These two examples of no calorie food substitutes that will allow food to continue to taste good without the calories is missing one of the most important stipulations – that there are no side effects. These attempts have been made since the 50’s and 60’s and not much progress has been made. Unless there is a motivated investor that sees a huge market in calorie free, good tasting, no side-effect food, this new innovation may not happen in the next 50 years.

Resources:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1931116,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_substitute