It’s a Cookbook

Abstract: Food animals have characteristic tastes and smells which are profoundly affected by what they eat. The same principles apply to people.

Despite the dog Latin on the Pentagon black ops badge patch, we don’t taste like chicken. We taste more like pork, which is why, in long-ago Polynesian cannibal circles, human flesh was termed ‘long pork’. It’s pretty much what you would expect, given that pigs and people are both opportunistic omnivores (pigs will eat humans if the opportunity arises) and have considerable metabolic overlap (1-3).

So, what is the best way to Soylent Green?

Free range, as every meat eater knows, tastes better than farmed. Given today’s ultra-processed diet and lifestyles we are more farmed than free-range, so the question on everyone’s lips must be, what should we do, now that the aliens have arrived (4, 5), to ensure that we are tastefully served?

The first thing we should do is to increase our intake of phytonutrients. These have a range of effects in the body ranging from the reduction of rancidity to subtle shifts in the microbiome which are well known to enhance the taste of meats (6-12). They may also improve the musty 2-nonenal odour that is a hallmark of ageing and malnourished humans (13-15).

One way of achieving this lofty goal is to consume more of those dreaded plant foods.

Good research indicates that for better health outcomes, 10 portions of fruits and vegetables per day is the target (16). Few of us get close. Britishers manage a mere 3.4 portions a day (17), and Americans don’t even get to 3 (18), despite constant government propaganda. It is hard to get people to change their diets when so many are addicted to ultra-processed, habit-forming swill.

Alternatively, we can increase our phytonutrient intake by changing the way we grow and process our food.

By selecting for high yield, pest resistance and increased sweetness (19), plant breeders have inadvertently reduced phytonutrient content, which is lower in many modernised food plants than in organic and heirloom varieties (20-29). This trade-off has been called ‘The Breeder’s Dilemma’ (30, 31).

Various methods have been developed to reverse this process and produce crops with higher levels of phytonutrients (32). These include organic production (20, 21, 25, 26), good old-fashioned Mendelian breeding, GM, an intrinsically riskier strategy which is less acceptable to large sections of the general public; and controlled exposure to extracts of herbivorous insects.

It’s complicated.

Many of the phytonutrients we recognize as important to our health such as the polyphenols, carotenoids and glucosinolates, are chemical weapons that plants produce to defend themselves against insect and other herbivores (33-36). These defenses can be highly specific; the defense compounds produced by a plant depend on which kind of predator it senses (33). They are often collective; when one plant is attacked it produces volatile messenger compounds to instruct neighbouring plants to up-regulate their defenses also (37).

And, they can be manipulated to our advantage. Spraying food plants with locust ‘soup’ triggers their defenses, and increases levels of the classic phytonutrients (ie 34-36).

The result of an aeon-long arms race between plants and herbivores, plant defense chemistry is a vast and fascinating topic, and nutritional science is still only scratching the surface. Along with the more familiar phytonutrients listed above are two lesser-known layers of plant defense compounds which may also impact on our health, but which have not yet been investigated.

One group, which like the classic phytonutrients is directed directly against plant predators, consists of chemicals which weaken the predators’ immune systems and make them prone to disease (38, 39). A second group works indirectly against herbivores by attracting carnivores – and, quite possibly, omnivores like us (40).

The overall impact of all of these plant compounds on flavour profiles and taste preferences remains to be explored (41). But biological war gaming, while it makes nutrient enhancement possible in the field, is not the whole story. We can improve things in the processing factory too.

Much traditional processing of fruits and vegetables uses thermal methods which degrade the foods’ phytonutrient content. The newer generation of processing technology does better; innovative non-thermal treatments such as gamma and ultraviolet irradiation, ultrasound, pulsed electric fields and high hydrostatic pressure produce food materials with significantly higher levels of phytonutrients (42-45). Levels of carotenoids in picked fruits can be increased by irradiating the produce with specific wave-lengths of visible light (46), and by subtle shifts in store room temperature (47).

Domestic processing and cooking are important too. For example, freezing and boiling can increase phytonutrient bioavailability by releasing carotenoids and polyphenols from intra-cellular storage, in tomatoes and other vegetables (48-52). Choose your cooking oil carefully; there is evidence that olive oil is helpful whereas sunflower oil may be less so (53).

It is generally better to use lower temperature cooking methods. Boiling is generally better than frying in this respect (54), and steaming (and microwaving) are better than boiling (55) as less leaching occurs. When possible, wash fruits and vegetables rather than peeling them as peels often contain the highest levels of phytonutrients (56-58).

On behalf of those who prefer ultra-processed food, we should send a message to the multinationals too. If they have any concerns about the health of their consumers they must review their production lines and investigate the possibility of modifying them with a view to reducing phytonutrient losses. Some of the fixes are simple and inexpensive.

There are also supplements. As a pharmacologist I don’t care if you choose to increase your intake of lycopene, for example, by eating more cooked tomatoes, soupspoons of tomato paste or purified lycopene in capsules. If you decide to go down the supplement route it is best to opt for as comprehensive a formulation as you can find. The micro- and phytonutrients work best when consumed in moderate doses, and in the complex combinations you would find in a blue zone diet.

If you need further motivation, there is an emerging body of evidence that higher intakes of phytonutrients not only make us healthier and happier (59), they make us leaner too (60-64), enabling us to achieve better body composition. Animals who eat them taste better (65, 66).

Only in this way can we hope, when the Kanamit invite us to join them at the dinner table, to be best served.

Next week: This post was a slight homage to the Twilight Zone. Next week, I explore the volatilome further.

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