American Diet to Get Overhaul at New Iowa Center for Designing Foods

Agricultural educators, biotechnicians, nutritionists, sociologists and economists are readying a joint attack on the dietary roulette that has become an American way of life and death.

The effort will be launched next fall with ground breaking for a $6.5 million Center for Designing Foods to Improve Nutrition, where researchers will look for clues to why people eat what they do and how to grow healthier food.

“We know how to teach people to read, we know how to teach people to do math but we really don’t know how to teach people to eat,” said Murray Kaplan, an Iowa State University nutrition professor and center acting coordinator.

The stakes are high.

“What we eat may affect our risk for several of the leading causes of death for Americans, notably coronary heart disease, stroke, atherosclerosis, diabetes and some types of cancer,” said U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop reported last year. “These disorders together now account for more than two-thirds of all deaths in the United States.”

Yet while the path to early death can be through the stomach, from too much fatty foods and not enough to vitamins and minerals, doctors and nutritionists still have trouble getting their message across, Kaplan said. “We have failed miserably. Madison Avenue has got more dollars for consumer education than the United States Department of Agriculture.”

Nutritionists need new strategies “instead of doing the same old thing. Putting out and publishing a lot of brochures isn’t the answer,” he said.

It’s a message that farm groups also are taking up.

“We’re all for more nutrition research and better nutrition education,” said Anne Winslow, director of nutrition policy for the National Cattlemen’s Assn. Such research will bear out that “no one food does it all” and that beef increasingly will be recognized for its nutrients, she said.

“Animal science people and the production people are no longer trying to fight the consumer,” Kaplan said. “They realize that if their products are not well perceived, if their products do not meet the dietary goals that come out of the National Institutes of Health or the surgeon general’s office, that people are not going to want to purchase and eat their products.”

One of the center’s goals is a better understanding of food choices. “A lot has to do with the way people are raised in their families. The way people eat when they’re young does influence life-long nutrition habits.”

Researchers will interview nearly 900 Iowans, many of whom were interviewed in 1978-1979, to examine the changes in food selection as children grow, families split and people age. A smaller control group will comprise people whose social situation now is similar to that of the original participants in 1978-1979.

Other studies will focus on tinkering with food to make it healthier while not making it unappetizing or too costly for consumers.

For example, animal feed based on soybeans with altered fat composition could produce animal fats that are more unsaturated. But unsaturated fats are softer than saturated fats, posing processing problems and taste different.

Technology also exists to make plants a better source of protein, but it’s not known if that protein is digestible or is beneficial.

And once the composition of food is changed, there may be a need to change the identity of common products like catsup or ice cream.

“A few years back, what is now called ‘light mayonnaise’ was called ‘imitation,”’ Kaplan said. “Who wants to buy imitation? It sounds like some sort of fake. But the only difference between light mayonnaise and traditional mayonnaise is really in the fat content and to most consumers it’s acceptable in terms of taste.”

The challenge to food producers is similar to the pressures brought on other industries, he said. “It’s no different than us demanding safer, better, more efficient automobiles. The industry responds very slowly . . . but if they don’t respond to that desire and someone else comes along and does it, the people who don’t respond will be out of business.

“Supplying food is more complicated than supplying automobiles, but there’s no reason why the industry should not be responsive.”