Nutrition for a Better Life E-Book

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe

• Herausgeber: Campus Verlag
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 308

Beschreibung

In Nutrition for a Better Life, one of the food industry's leading experts takes a factual look into the past and future of food and nutrition. Former Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe shows that while in the past forty years convenience was the selling point for many industrially produced foods, consumers have now come to demand specifically healthy products. Going forward, it is health that will drive innovation in the industry. Using cutting-edge technology and scientifically based nutrition standards, the food industry will play a decisive role in improving the wellbeing of entire population groups, offering effective and cost-saving personalized diets that will both prevent and administer to the acute and chronic diseases of the twenty-first century.

Leseprobe

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe

NUTRITION FOR A BETTER LIFE

A Journey from the Origins of Industrial Food Production to NutrigenomicsTranslated from German by Ian Copestake

Campus Verlag

Frankfurt/New York

About the book

In Nutrition for a Better Life, one of the food industry‘s leading experts takes a factual look into the past and future of food and nutrition. Former Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe shows that while in the past forty years convenience was the selling point for many industrially produced foods, consumers have now come to demand specifically healthy products. Going forward, it is health that will drive innovation in the industry. Using cutting-edge technology and scientifically based nutrition standards, the food industry will play a decisive role in improving the wellbeing of entire population groups, offering effective and cost-saving personalized diets that will both prevent and administer to the acute and chronic diseases of the twenty-first century.

Vita

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe is Chairman of the Board of Directors at Nestlé S.A. He started his career at Nestlé in 1968 as salesman and product manager for icecream. From 1970 to 1987 he worked for Nestlé in Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela, later transferring to Nestlé’s international headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland, where he took on worlwide responsibility for Culinary Products. In 1992 he was appointed Executive Vice President of Nestlé S.A. with worldwide leadership of strategic business groups while simultaneously being in charge of Marketing Consumer and Corporate Communications, and Public Affairs. In 1997 he was elected as a member of the Board of Directors and appointed Chief Executive Officer of Nestlé S.A., a position from which he resigned in 2008. Since 2005 he has been Chairman of the Board of Directors at Nestlé S.A. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe also serves as Vice Chairman of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum in Davos and board member of several companies.

CONTENTS

Prof. Dr. Patrick Aebischer: FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

THE FUTURE OF FOOD—PERSONALIZED, SCIENCE-BASED, RESOURCES EFFICIENT, CARING

CHAPTER 1: ON THE WAY TO NUTRITION OF THE FUTURE

Global megatrends on the consumer side

The Silver Society—On the road to an aging world

Chronic diseases are increasing

The trend towards growing health awareness

The role of health in today’s competitive society

Individualization is particularly evident through food

The tasks of the new food science

Life Sciences—A new dimension of science as a solution

CHAPTER 2:FROM THE BEGINNINGS OF INDUSTRIAL FOOD PRODUCTION TO TODAY

When the specter of hunger dominated the world

Population growth and food shortages

With industrialization came prosperity

Personalities made history

Soldiers need long-lasting food

Cans conquer the market

Major advances in the dairy products industry

Completely new products come on the market

The importance of the food industry is growing

The discovery of beet sugar

Chocolate—a tempting product

Cold Preservation

What has changed since the baby boomer period

Ice cream—from specialty to mass product

Coca-Cola—from medicine to a lifestyle

Preparing Food quickly, easily and better

The challenge to capture the aroma of coffee

Breakfast from the sanatorium

The international food industry

Pepsico: switch to healthier foods

Unilever: sustainable production of agricultural products

Coke: reduction of calorie content

Mondelez: incentives for responsible consumption

Danone: health through nutrition to as many people as possible

Naturalness as a guiding principle

The development of research from its beginnings to nutrigenomics

Coexistence of basic research and practical development

Nutrition as the most important internal growth target

Steps towards molecular nutrition

The world’s largest private network of Food Research

CHAPTER 3:HOW CAN A GROWING WORLD POPULATION STAY HEALTHY AND LIVE LONGER?

Societal changes affect the global food industry

Environmental aspects come to the fore

Life Science and Health

More research in the food industry

Food to stay healthy and fit

Macro- and micronutrients are essential

Bioactive substances in foods

Clearly defined nutritional criteria

Taste must be preserved

How the global food industry is structured

The European Union—outwardly strong, inwardly fragmented

The USA’s focus on out-of-home

The supply of global and local markets

How the global food industry works

Demography and purchasing power

Trade is gaining importance

Food safety remains a challenge

CHAPTER 4:LIFE SCIENCES AND THE REVOLUTION OF BIOLOGY, NUTRITION AND HEALTH

The mission statement—A personalized diet for different population groups

Understanding how the body really works

Genetic research looks for unknown patterns

The environment determines the gene pool

How genes and food influence each other

Biomarkers help diagnosis

Metabolomics—on the trail of metabolism

The microbiome—a community for the entire life

With birth the development of the microbiome begins

Living a long and healthy life as a research target

CHAPTER 5:THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE FOOD INDUSTRY

The consumer is the focus from the very beginning

The growing market for specialty and wellness food

The idea of a “Nutrition, Health and Wellness Company”

HealthCare Nutrition—Nutritional solutions for people with specific medical conditions

Nestlé Health Science Company—a new health frontier arises

Cooperation and takeovers strengthen the scientific foundations

Nestle Skin Health for the health of skin, hair and nails

Nutrition as therapy

Competition for a longer life

Solutions for certain life situations and risk groups

Poor nutrition makes one aggressive

Food for extreme situations

CHAPTER 6:THE RESPONSIBILITY OF POLICY

Preventive health systems as part of global health

Ensuring fair competition as a political task

CHAPTER 7:THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EACH INDIVIDUAL

What can we decide and what not?

Not all decisions are made in the head

Traditions, diet myths and ideological trends

Diet myths instead of knowledge

Back to nature—the yearning for the original

The 7 diet types

Quality as a growing trend?

From diet to lifestyle

How the social environment shapes our eating habits

Destructuring the daily routine leads to the snack culture

Stress affects eating habits

Time pressure affects eating behavior

The trend is towards convenience products

The influence of diet on health

Gluten and lactose—The Free-from trend

Coffee is more than just a stimulant

The properties of spices

From general nutrition advice to specific recommendations

The first 1,000 days are the most important

Proper nutrition for every age

How eating habits are formed

Changing eating habits is difficult

CHAPTER 8:MILESTONES ON THE WAY TO THE FUTURE

What is conceivable, what is possible?

Food with new quality

The benefits of genetic testing are not yet clear

Big Data opens new possibilities

APPENDIX

WHO—guideline and values ​​for the consumption of sugar, salt and trans fats

1.Healthy diet

2.Information note about intake of sugars recommended in the WHO guideline for adults and children

Free sugars versus intrinsic sugars

Strong recommendations

Further reduction: a conditional recommendation

WHO guidance on dietary salt and potassium

Total fat and fatty acids

Summary of Total Fat and Fatty Acid Requirements for Adults, Infants (0–24 months) and Children (2–18 years)

Conclusions and Recommended dietary requirements for trans-fatty acid intake (TFA)

NOTES

Introduction

Chapter 1: On the way to feeding the future

Chapter 2:From the beginnings of industrial food production to today

Chapter 3:How can a growing world population stay healthy and live longer?

Chapter 4:Life Sciences and the revolution of biology, nutrition and health

Chapter 5:The responsibility of the food industry

Chapter 7:The responsibility of each individual

Chapter 8:Milestones on the way to the future

LITERATURE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INDEX

FOREWORD

Prof. Dr. Patrick Aebischer

Less than twenty years ago, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) defined the right to food. It is the “right of every individual alone or in community with others, to have physical and economic access at all times to sufficient, adequate and culturally acceptable food that is produced and consumed sustainably, preserving access to food for future generations”. Availability, accessibility, adequacy and sustainability: a rather ambitious definition. And just when we, humans, define the right to food, scientists (notably the then chief UK scientist J. Beddington) predict that by 2030, the demand for food will increase by 50%, for energy by 50%, and for water by 30%, thus creating a ‘perfect storm’ of global events. Today (2015) 793 million people still go hungry—down from 927 in 2007. We will need innovation, policy, and behavioral changes to fight this storm. Science and technology, universities and businesses must make a significant contribution.

Can the world population of 2030—that’s 8.5 billion people—be fed equitably, healthily and sustainably? The good news is that hunger in its most extreme form has decreased globally from over 1 billion in 1990–1992, representing 18.9 percent of the world’s population, to 842 million in 2011–2013, or 12 percent of the population. To meet future food demand, agricultural productivity must increase everywhere, particularly among poor farmers. Meeting this challenge requires continued innovation in food processing and packaging to deliver safe, nutritious, and affordable food. It requires reduction of waste and losses, improved crops tolerant to stress, pollution by smarter use of water, fertilizers and new pesticides. We must do it all. The question is not whether productivity should be raised to address hunger and malnutrition. The question is how to achieve this. Increasing yields alone will not suffice.

We need a “greener” Green Revolution. The first Green Revolution technological package had a hefty environmental load. Now, a new vista focused on resilience and sustainability, and also wellbeing, is replacing—or adding to—the productivist paradigm. Solving this new equation requires integrative science, appropriate technology, farmers’ knowledge and participation, a performing industry and informed consumers.

Today the world produces enough food for all to go without hunger. Yet hungry many are. On one hand, the source of hunger, is poverty: hungry families do not have the means to buy food. On the other, the culprit is the food system: today, one-third of produced food is eaten by pests or rots away. We need to make agriculture more efficient.

Medicine is moving towards the “4Ps”, becoming a predictive, personalized, preventive, participatory medicine. Should farming not benefit from the same approach? Smart farming that integrates local knowledge, cutting edge science, appropriate technology, big data, farmers, smartphones, and businesses. Precision farming that leads to better yields through genotype improvement, exact fertilizer input, proper nutrient ratios, adequate irrigation schedules, geospatial techniques of soil identification, and appropriate mitigation of pests and diseases. Precision farming has the potential to reduce the use of external inputs and thus maximize resource efficiency.

Different forms of farming can and must coexist, our current awe for local organic farming notwithstanding. Strengthening local food systems needs appropriate investments in infrastructure, packaging and processing facilities, and distribution channels, keeping in mind that two out of three humans will live in cities by 2050. Two important strands of agriculture–genetic engineering and organic farming–will also have to be judiciously incorporated to help feed the growing population in an ecologically balanced manner.

Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan pledges to use digital technology to clear away one obstacle to progress for the hundreds of millions of African smallholder farmers: their profound isolation. Africa’s smallholders are more than capable of feeding the continent if they are able to use the best agronomic practices. “Most have not adopted these improvements, however, because they don’t know about them,” says Kofi Annan; “using digital technology to reach smallholder farmers to help them organize holds out the potential for another agricultural revolution.” The first Green Revolution increased productivity; the ‘Green Data Revolution’ will create a smarter, more flexible and resilient food system.

Precision farming incorporates appropriate knowledge and practices, and the green data revolution: this marriage of high tech and local improvements is one key to success. As a small, telling example, consider the initiative run by Nespresso and the non-profit organization Technoserve in South Sudan. The program enables farmers to set up cooperatives, raise funds, invest in infrastructure, and commercialize their coffee for export. It combines local savoir-faire and top notch technology. In less that two years, it facilitated the creation of three coffee exporting cooperatives in the south of the country, the first commercial coffee to leave South Sudan in over 30 years.

Food security and empowerment of farmers through science is one part of the story. Olivier de Schutter, the special rapporteur to the UN on the right to food, reminds us that the narrative of nutrition changed in a fundamental way when the UN launched its new Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. It moved from a sole focus on undernutrition alleviation and food security to one that includes food quality, equity and food systems, with a central focus on malnutrition in all its forms. Malnutrition is indeed a critical public health problem. It affects the most vulnerable populations: children, the elderly and the sick; individuals afflicted with disease, injuries, in social isolation or with limited resources. Malnutrition affects an estimated 30% to 50% of hospitalized adult patients in the United States. According to the WHO, in 2012, two billion people lacked essential vitamins and minerals.

Are science and industry tuned to answer the challenge of malnutrition? One science-based response to malnutrition is nutrigenomics, the application of genomics tools in nutrition research to understand better how nutrition influences metabolic pathways, how “diet-regulated“ genes are likely to play a role in chronic diseases, how nutrients affect people differently. Ultimately, nutrigenomics will lead to efficient dietary-intervention strategies. Industry plays a crucial role in delivering these individualized or group-specific products to the customer.

Nutrient needs should be met primarily by the quality of food. Food science and engineering do produce—or intend to produce—healthier foods. Yet processed foods are increasingly seen as problematic. We do not realize that almost all foods currently consumed are processed. The three pillars of our Greek ancestors–olive oil, wine, and bread–are all processed. We tend to forget the benefits of the modern food system: lower food losses, better preservation and availability, improved nutritional status, convenience and choice. To get the best nutrition, to fight malnutrition, we need all the tools we can get. Fortunately, food engineering is benefitting from the rapid convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, computer science and cognitive sciences, opening fascinating new avenues. These include food structuring, package engineering, digestive system simulation and modeling, understanding the bio-availability of nutrients, the mechanisms of satiety and the role of genetic predispositions.

Food engineering is also driven by a number of major food companies. Large company research centers have created an environment in which food research is cutting edge. Food science is one field where universities and industry need each other. Research in nutrition seems pointless if we cannot deliver it to customers and patients; it requires highly qualified human resources and expensive equipment, typically located at universities. Moreover, food science creates plenty of qualified jobs. Indeed, the best food science should embrace universities, industry, and the art of cooking—chefs—, because food is more than just its components.

Nutrition engineering can boast many successes, the “super broccoli”, oligosaccharide prebiotics and Lactobacillus acidophilus probiotics in yogurt, whole grain–rich foods, low-gluten foods, foods without allergens and smaller portion packages. Despite this, nutrition engineering is often viewed as ‘‘nutritionism’’, the simplistic reduction of food to its nutrient components, and unfavorably compared to “whole foods”. While mishaps litter the history of processed food—such as low-saturated, high-trans fatty acid cooking oils—the global attack on processed food is unwarranted. As chef Anthony Warner says, “Food is not good for you based on where it was produced. Nutritional value depends on what the food consists of. … Natural does not necessarily mean healthy, processed does not necessarily mean unhealthy. We should love fresh food and cooking from scratch, but we should love facts even more. If we, scientists, politicians, health professionals, journalists and chefs continue to distance ourselves from all convenience food, we will distance ourselves from real, time-poor consumers and never change a thing”.

I commend Peter Brabeck for a timely book. It is a time of increasing challenges to food system resilience, of the indispensable juncture of the health and sustainability agendas, on the verge of a data-enabled revolution in agriculture. His unique insights are a valued contribution to this most important challenge of our century, feeding nine or ten billion people equitably, healthily and sustainably.

INTRODUCTION

The greatest human desire has always been to lead a healthy and long life. To date, we have already brought this goal a lot closer. Since the mid-19th century, the health of broad social groups in the US and in Europe has improved significantly. The average life expectancy of newborns doubled in both Britain and Germany from 41 and 37 years respectively in 1871 to 80 years in 2015, while in Japan this has now increased from 37 to 85 years.1 Worldwide, life expectancy in 1820 was 26 years2 and in 2013 it was 71 years3.

This development is a crucial part of the result of ever improving nutrition. Only industrial production of food and logistics have provided a sufficient amount of inexpensive, nutritious high quality and risk free food for the broad mass of populations in the cities and the countryside. Medicine has also made parallel advances in the fight against infectious diseases and in the area of hygiene that can be compared with those in food production.

Meanwhile, not only in the US and in Europe, but also in many other parts of the world an affluent society has emerged. By 1996, a clear relationship between the amount of available calories and increasing life expectancy could be detected in highly industrialized societies. The number of calories available has since risen further, but the life expectancy curve has leveled off.4

In the last decades, the quantitative growth in food production has not brought people in Western affluent societies any additional benefits. Diseases of affluence such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity have reached epidemic proportions, and the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease increases with each year that we get older. For food manufacturers, this means refocusing and generating knowledge of products with new properties, which reach far beyond the replacement and reduction of sugar, salt and fat in food.

Fig. 1: Correlation between life expectancy and intake of calories

Even in ancient times people were aware that there is a relationship between diet and health. For centuries this realization was the most important foundation of medicine. Medical knowledge was based almost exclusively on observation. Because simply too little was known about the functioning of the body, false and ineffective treatments and recommendations were the rule rather than the exception. To date, there are doctrines that promise a long and healthy life, without being able to provide reliable evidence for their accuracy.

In fact, due to the progress in the various fields of research in the life sciences, the relationship between diet and health has been put in a completely new light. If we change our habits in a similar manner, we can already optimize our health sustainably and prevent certain diseases. The potential is still far from exhausted.

Therefore, the issue of health in the coming decades will trigger a wave of innovation in the food industry. Its advanced technology will play a crucial role in improving the health of entire population groups. The role of science-based personalized health nutrition in the future is to find efficient and cost effective ways to prevent and treat the acute and chronic diseases of the 21st century.

The key messages of the book are summarized in six theses that follow this introduction.

The first chapter begins with the consumers and the question of which diet trends will determine the future, what trends we had in the past and how they were intertwined with the general social developments and changes. This is followed by a consideration of changes in food production, taking account of consumer needs, environmental considerations and resource conservation. The third part of the first chapter offers a first look at the new sciences, which are gathered under the umbrella of the Life Sciences.

The concept of industrial production has been linked positively to many everyday products such as cars or computers. Even products from the entertainment industry are highly appreciated. Compared to this, the food industry has found it more difficult to be perceived positively in today’s society.

In the second chapter, I therefore want to take a mental journey through time to show the contribution of the food industry to the progress of humanity, and show the potential future challenges for this industry.

The third chapter will take stock of the present situation of world food, by focusing on overall social development and change.

Food research is discussed in chapter four. Their findings gain much attention in the media and among the public. But many researchers are content to confirm already existing findings and recommendations. Others enter into a competition with their scientific colleagues and try to outdo or disprove them through the publication of ever more shocking reports. At the end the consumer is left completely unsure by the flood of information alone. Therefore, I turn in the fifth chapter to the responsibility of the food industry, while in the sixth and seventh chapters I deal with the responsibilities of policy makers and the individual. Chapter eight provides an outlook on future developments.

In this book, I attempt to look into the future. Not in the form of speculative science fiction, but on the basis of what is being researched today. The research results will be available in a few years and could revolutionize food production to the extent that we come closer to the realization of the human dream of a healthy and long life. We should not miss this opportunity.

For those who want to learn more about the background and other areas of my ideas and actions, I recommend they read my bio-graphy (Friedhelm Schwarz: Peter Brabeck-Letmathe and Nestlé–a portrait. Creating value together, Bern of 2010). Information on the WHO guidelines on the subject of sugar, salt and fat can also be found in the appendix.

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe

Vevey/Schweiz, September 2016

THE FUTURE OF FOOD—PERSONALIZED, SCIENCE-BASED, RESOURCES EFFICIENT, CARING

1.The challenge

We all desire a long and healthy life. This requires in the future basic dietary changes: a healthy diet for a growing world population can only be ensured if new scientific knowledge becomes part of the production of foods, if the lifestyle of people is oriented toward the goal of a healthy, long life and with a food system efficiently using natural resources.

2.The model

There will not be a uniform approach to healthy eating for everyone, but rather a personalized diet for different population groups. These differences may be either of a genetic or epigenetic nature, based, for example, on age or dependent on the specific life situation.

3.The responsibility of science

The Life Sciences will provide knowledge on a completely new basis with regard to the relationships of biological functions in the human body, nutrition and health.

4.The responsibility of the Food Industry

On the basis of the scientific knowledge of the life sciences, the food industry is developing products and services for a personalized diet for different populations. It provides these services to preserve resources and be socially beneficial for the greatest possible number of people.

5.The responsibility of politics

Social systems and health systems have to be changed from the treatment of existing diseases to the precautionary prevention of diseases. An open market must enable an efficient allocation of resources and comprehensive innovations.

6.The responsibility of each individual

People need to aspire to a new holistic quality in their personal lifestyle and diet and be supported by educational institutions, the media, the producers and processors of food and the food trade.

CHAPTER 1: ON THE WAY TO NUTRITION OF THE FUTURE

The reasons why we will feed ourselves differently in the future, is due to the results of scientific research, the manufacture of food and of course constantly changing consumer behavior. Worldwide, consumers will change their behavior and habits in the next 20 years much faster than was the case in the past 60 years. This is due to growing wealth and knowledge and the fact that we are already have technical possibilities in food production that were unthinkable a few decades ago.

However, increasing prosperity not only brings improvements but, as experience shows, even problems. It is not only the companies that have to face the challenges of globalization, it is also every individual who must adapt to global changes and while this is indeed experienced mostly as an advantage it can sometimes be a disadvantage.

Industrial manufacturers of food products are on the one hand expected to supply the ever-growing world population, while on the other hand they have to satisfy the consumption needs of increasingly differentiated consumer groups. 60 years ago, the challenge for the food industry was mainly to produce more and better. Today they must additionally meet an extensive list of demands in terms of sustainability, resource conservation and environmental considerations. They not only do this because of a call by consumers and the politics behind them, but because they have also learned themselves to recognize that growth today in terms of security for the future depends on recognizing new conditions as it was in the first decades after the Second World War.

In the sciences in the 1980s new fields of research began to be opened up. Today we are at the point of implementing that research to put this new knowledge into practice and so give people what they want most, namely health and a long life.

Fig. 2: The next Step: extensive wellbeing

Global megatrends on the consumer side

“Panta rhei–everything flows”, this saying from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus could also be the guiding principle for the field of trend research. Our world is in a constant state of flux, something which is not perceived by most people, because they are part of it themselves. The changes and developments in the depths of the global society are like currents in the ocean, which develop into a large force.

Megatrends change the world slowly, but for the long term and fundamentally. If a new Apple iPhone hits the market, which is perhaps a trendy product, it does not constitute a trend or a megatrend. Mobile communication, which began in the early 1990s, however, is an excellent example of a megatrend, as it has changed the lives of most people fundamentally. Trend researcher John Naisbitt saw it already in 1982,1 before either mobile phones or the internet were available to the general population. Ten years later, in 1993, there were 34 million mobile phone connections, and by 2015 there were 7.085 billion worldwide. On Earth, there are therefore almost as many mobile phones as people (7.3 billion).2

Food trends that describe how our diet will look like in the future will be determined by a number of megatrends. Conversely, changes in eating habits for the trend researchers are also indicators that permit conclusions to be made about the emergence of new megatrends. For the future development of nutrition the following megatrends are of particular importance:

an increasingly aging society,

the increase of chronic diseases and

an ever growing health consciousness, which is based largely on the first two trends.

There are also other strong factors that will influence our eating habits in the future. This also means that more and more people are living in ever larger cities, which must be supplied with food, and marks the emergence of a new lifestyle due to the demands and opportunities of globalization, which is described as a trend regarding the ‘individualisation of life’. This also has a far-reaching influence on what we eat, when we eat and where we eat.

Fig. 3: Global health ecosystem—by 2020

The Silver Society—On the road to an aging world

On every continent more people reach a higher age than ever before. This applies to industrialized countries, the emerging economies and the least developed countries, although at different rates depending on the starting position of the respective societies. The rapid growth of aging populations is not only a challenge to social systems, but also to food manufacturers, because every age, from babies to the very elderly, needs a diet that is tailored to their very specific situation and based on current knowledge.

The year 2050 is expected to see a world population of 9.7 billion people.3 The number of over-60s, which is now around 841 million worldwide, is expected to grow to over two billion by 2050. Of these 360 million will be older than 80 years and three million older than 100 years. 2020 will be the first time in human history that more people are aged over 60 in the world than children under five.4 The reason we are getting older is primarily due to increasing global prosperity, which ensures better nutrition and medical care. Currently there are two billion people worldwide on the way out of extreme poverty and moving towards a life that offers sufficient material supplies.5

The fastest current increases in life expectancy are of people in Latin America and Asia. In Latin America, an average age of at least 70 years is predicted for children who were born in 2012. In Asia, life expectancy between countries is still very different. Top place is occupied by the residents of Singapore and Hong Kong, and it is quite possible that they will catch up with the levels found in Western industrial countries, or even outstrip them. Today, however, Europe is still in front.6

After Japan, Italy and Switzerland, Germany is the country with the fourth highest average age of population. In 2030, more than half of the people will be over 50 years old in Europe. The further life expectancy of 50-year-olds will then be another 40 years. One assumes that by 2030 in industrialized countries more than a third of the population will be 65 years and older. At the same time the proportion of people in Asia over 60 will be already more than half of the population.7 In the US, 37 percent will be more than 50 years old and a good 20 percent over 65.8

Demographic change leads to a general change in society. Not only will lifestyles and consumption change due to the growing population of older people, but also the requirements of social and healthcare systems. The older ones will want to maintain in their subsequent years the lifestyle that they have acquired in the 30 years before the age of 60. In the US, the majority of the population feels old when they reach 80 years. In Germany, this feeling is, on average, already felt at 77 years. But if one looks at the average life expectancy in these countries, then the difference in the period in which people feel old is only three to five years. The perceived age of the people in these countries is between ten to 20 years lower than their actual biological age.9

So today people have a completely different self-perception. This is a reason that the young and middle-aged people compare their lifestyle and their way of life with that of the very old. Many people reach old age with hardly impaired health. The expectation of being able to spend one’s life in health, the so-called “healthy life expectancy,” is always improving because medicine is able to treat acute diseases, accidents, as well as infections better and delay the onset of chronic illness. In addition, more and more old people come to believe that they can postpone the aging process and its symptoms through their personal behavior.

The feeling of old people as being really old, is mitigated by urbanization and increasing mobility. Currently this produces a “Multi-aging culture”10 with many individual forms of aging. More and more old people because of their life experience are concerned about cohesion in a changing society. Health and nutrition concepts do not have for the elderly an orientation in their past, as is commonly expected. But the willingness to shape the process of aging itself is now far greater in the elderly than it was in previous generations. This attitude carries over to the offspring.

In many developed countries, the elderly are the only growing consumer group, because the current 50 plus consumer generation is accustomed to its purchasing power, is mobile and familiar with modern communication media.11 The classic “first health market”, consisting of doctors, hospitals, health insurance, nursing, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies as well as medical technology, becomes more and more reliant on the older “second health market” which includes alternative medicine, coaching, wellness and sports facilities, as well as nutritional counselling and the entire food industry.12

What the elderly need is a diet that promotes wellbeing and makes them feel good. However, this food is not to be presented as for “seniors” or as “baby food for pensioners,” but the challenge to the food industry, is to provide a differentiated food supply that meets the metabolic demands of aging people and in taste and presentation is no different from what younger people are used to eating.

Chronic diseases are increasing

Chronically ill people are defined as those treated for at least one year for the same disease at least once a quarter by a physician. In Germany, in 2010 two out of five people met this definition.13 In the US, chronic diseases (including cancer) are responsible each year for seven out of ten deaths, causing 86 percent of total national health care costs.14 One of the main problems is the metabolic syndrome, a complex system of morbid obesity, causing disturbances in lipid metabolism, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. According to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) in 2014 387 million people worldwide suffer from diabetes.15 Two thirds of them live in developing countries. By 2035, the IDF predicts an increase in world diabetes patients to 592 million.

More than a billion people from a total of 6.7 billion in 2008 are overweight, or around 15 percent. By 2050 this will apply to about 20 percent of the estimated 9.6 billion population, say the United Nations.16 In the US, more than 170 million people who are aged 18 or older, are overweight (2014), while it is not just adults who suffer from this. In China, 20 per cent of under-18s will be overweight and the percentage of overweight male minors in Brazil, Mexico and Russia is already higher than in Germany.

Professor Ganten, the organizer of the Berlin World Health Summit, stated in 2010 that we export the so-called lifestyle diseases to poorer countries. That there are more and more chronically ill is caused among other things by the fact that we are living longer and so the number of risk factors increases. Diabetes is a typical disease of aging, as is dementia. Today, there are 55 million patients with dementia and by 2050 their number will have nearly tripled to 135 million.17

The majority of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer and respiratory diseases can be attributed to a relatively small number of risk factors. These include smoking and excessive alcohol consumption, obesity, high cholesterol and hypertension. “We eat too much and eat poorly. We are moving too little. To get chronic diseases of the cardiovascular system and obesity under control, for example, we need in the first place to change the diet, “said Professor Ganten.

It is therefore important that from kindergarten we eat healthily, consuming a less salt and sugar-rich diet and so develop an understanding of what our bodies need.

“There is much talk about cost, but I believe that the real challenge is educational. This is the best sort of vaccination, and a basic requirement for healthy behavior, “said Ganten, the former head of Charité in Berlin. “We will never achieve a society that is completely free from disease. This a part of life, “said Ganten. “But we need to avoid the mistakes we make in many areas”.18

Worldwide approximately 57 million people died in 2008, 36 million of them to non-communicable diseases. 17 million deaths were due to cardiovascular disease, 7.6 million to cancer, 4.2 million to chronic respiratory diseases and 1.3 million to diabetes. These four groups of diseases are thus responsible for about 80 percent of deaths from non-communicable diseases. Being sedentary alone accounts for 3.2 million deaths.19

Anyone who thinks such civilization diseases mainly affect people in industrialized countries is mistaken. On every continent except Africa the number of deaths due to chronic diseases now exceeds the number of deaths caused by infectious diseases.20

To combat the global health problems of the world population successfully, requires the cooperation of all stakeholders that deal with people’s diets. It will not be enough in the future to appeal only to people’s reason and their own responsibility. The consumer must participate in combating health problems themselves but, for various reasons, this is often not happening. Also to rely on the medical care of people by physicians and pharmaceutical manufacturers given the size of the problem does not offer a satisfactory solution.