Breakthroughs Today

THE definition of “food” nowadays can pose some difficulty when almost anything can be put into the mouth and ingested. Our age has already defined food beyond the staples, the fruits, the vegetables, or the meats of old. Even the term “food supplement” adds to the confusion since fruits and vegetables provide the vita-minerals they contain. Supplements, too, are presented as “processed” foods. So the demarcation has faded. A piece of mango can be presented as “food supplement” as the capsule popped into your mouth. What is food then? We have to go back to basics. Food must be anything you can eat or drink, and must provide nutritional support to your body without any therapeutic effects. Even this definition has problems. It is a fact of medical science that... [ Read more. ] This article is available in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 24 November 2010.

CLAIMS of healing become suspect when the cure cannot stand the scrutiny on its ability to heal. That makes any therapeutic claim in the labels of food supplements (not drugs) questionable, unless otherwise proven scientifically. In the end, taking a food supplement on faith, and not on hard evidence, can only show the outcome of faith and not because the cure was effective. Even with the famous antioxidant vitamins—such as beta-carotene, vitamin C (ascorbic acid) and vitamin E—few studies involving food supplements have been found with relevant information, as opposed to studies on food sources and their effect on serious conditions such as cancer. What research literature extensively provided was extensive experimental evidence that antioxidants reduce oxidative stress but not that they directly lower the risk for uterine cancer (cancer of the uterus). [ Read more. ] This article appear in SunStar Cebu on 17 November 2010.