ABSTRACT
Over the past century, as income levels have risen and societies have been able to invest in the science and technologies of food production, additional values have been added to processed foods. Foods are increasingly more convenient, freeing a larger and larger segment of the population from the need to prepare foods for immediate consumption. Foods are becoming progressively more delicious. Eating is a physiologically pleasurable experience, and safe, nourishing foods also enhance the quality of daily life through enhanced taste, flavor, texture, and even color. With greater income, society is able to afford increasingly more diverse foods in which the various elements of food delight (flavor, texture, color, etc.) are simultaneously enhanced. Foods are becoming more and more nutritious. In the latter half of the 20th century, a growing awareness of the ability of different food components to alter physiology, metabolism, and immunologic functions has led to the development of “functional foods” in which these health values are explicitly added to foods targeted at subsets of consumers (e.g., athletes, the infirm, the elderly) (Clydesdale, 1997).
