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Açai, goji, chia. Pepino, mangosteen, rambutan. Quinoa, teff, fonio. Names to conjure with, especially if you’re in the business of selling food dreams. All of them have been touted at one time or another as being the next big thing. Superfoods that can cure all the ills that ail you. Many more mundane foods — chocolate, coffee, red wine — have mutated into functional foods, imbued with power to promote good health and fight disease.

“[B]etween 2011 and 2015 there was a phenomenal 202% increase globally in the number of new food and drink products launched containing the terms ‘superfood’, ‘superfruit’ or ‘supergrain’,” according to Mintel research.

Whether you believe the claims — I remain dubious — there’s one group of people that these foods could definitely help: the farmers who grow them. There are, however, reasons to be cautious.

A recent issue of the journal Choices brought together a set of case studies from Central and South America. I chatted to Trent Blare, one of the two editors of that issue, about some of the success stories and some of the difficulties.

Notes

1. Choices Magazine Online: Functional Foods: Fad or Path to Prosperity?
2. Chocolate really does “contribute to normal blood flow”.
3. But here’s what Harvard School of Public Health thinks about superfoods.
4. And that enlightened Swiss chocolate company Trent Blare mentioned? That would be Choba Choba.
5. A transcript? Sure, as soon as it is ready.
6. Cover photo by Neil Palmer/CIAT shows a lulo farmer in Darién, Colombia. Banner image of açai fruits in Brazil by Kate Evans/CIFOR.

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Photographer, writer, traveller, cook, geographer, culinary anthropologist: Naomi Duguid is all this, and more. True, her books contain approachable recipes that have won awards and accolades from food-first organisations, like the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. But they also offer sensitive insights into the lives of people far from her native Canada. Why do they prepare, cook and eat the foods they do? How does the way they live influence the way they eat, and vice versa? And all illustrated with her photographs, at once both informative and atmospheric.

Though the people and food she chronicles are from far away, she has a knack of preserving their distinctness while making us all neighbours.

Notes

1. Naomi Duguid’s website is at naomiduguid.com, but you’re much more likely to find her on Instagram or Twitter.
2. You can find Burma: River of Flavors and Taste of Persia at bookshop.org and getting them there gives independent bookshops (and me) a hand.
3. The transcript is here.
4. Cover photo by Randy Risling/Toronto Star

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Anna Herforth is the lead author of Cost and affordability of healthy diets across and within countries, a background paper prepared for The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020. In the paper, Herforth and her colleagues calculate the cost of getting enough energy, getting adequate nutrition, and getting a diet that meets healthy eating guidelines. The results are sobering.

All this is possible because the World Bank collects a massive amount of data in its International Comparison Program, including the market price of hundreds of food items. Governments and other bodies issue healthy eating guidelines that offer their considered opinion on what a healthy diet should look like. And at Tufts University in Boston, where Herforth has been working, they’ve been building models that can take the full range of what’s available in the market and calculate the cheapest way to meet the requirements of any specified diet. Put all that together and you discover that, globally, roughly three billion people cannot afford a healthy diet.

How should we respond? The paper concludes: “To make healthy diets cheaper, agricultural policies, research, and development need to shift toward a diversity of nutritious foods.”

Notes

1. Cost and affordability of healthy diets across and within countries is published by FAO.
2. The paper is part of the work of the Food Prices for Nutrition program at Tufts University. There is loads more information there.
3. Here’s the transcript.
4. Interstitial music by mmleys.

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