Have a functional foods-filled Thanksgiving Part I

A not-so-serious post encouraging Thanksgiving indulgence by using sciency words. Also, a brief look at the infamous cranberry sauce.

Edit: Below I commented that cranberries are an Old World food. However, it should have said New World as the Americas and the West are considered the “New World”. Completely oblivious oversight, so apologies!

So we’re a few days away from Thanksgiving in the here, good old U.S. of A.

If the cold months haven’t gotten your waistlines to extend yet, Thanksgiving and the coming weeks are sure to make everyone wish for larger belts this Christmas due to all of the foods and desserts. We’re also not likely to spend time outdoors as the harsh cold makes us less likely to go out while also encouraging mindless snacking.

Being from an Asian immigrant family Thanksgiving is one of the only times for us to have turkey, ham, and all of the traditional sides that are otherwise foreign to use the rest of the year, so usually we like to go all-out.

This includes stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, and homemade chocolate pecan pie which has become mandatory for I to make.

Image from Patriot Ledger.

Of course, such indulgence should not be encouraged as an everyday thing, especially due to our modern proclivities to constantly indulge and eat foods that are not the best for us. COVID should have also made us more aware of the significance food and proper eating plays in our overall well-being.

But Thanksgiving is one of those times where we make an exception. It does, after all, come once a year, so maybe we can let our gluttonous slide go free for just a little bit.

Fortunately, most people’s Thanksgiving table is likely to be comprised of a variety of colors, likely owed to a wide array of fruits and vegetable dishes that counter the carb-heavy stuffing and mashed potatoes.

Hopefully an all-beige/brown Thanksgiving table is not the norm, but rather a rarity…

As we’ve come to know colorful foods are a visual cue of various nutrients, and the world of food science continues to investigate the role these nutrients play in benefiting us.

Such foods, which are argued to act more than just a provider of typical nutrients, are called functional foods.

Foods that help prevent cancer, fight diabetes, help boost cognition and memory, are all labeled as functional foods. You’ve probably seen some foods and products with such labels, or as described by nutritionists.

An article from Dr. Axe’s website provides an in-depth definition and examples of functional foods:

While there is no standard way to define functional foods or an official functional foods definition, most consider functional foods to be foods that provide health benefits beyond their “basic nutrients” — meaning micronutrients and macronutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, carbs, fat and protein.

Functional foods provide these essential nutrients, but they also contain additional and often unique, protective compounds that most other foods do not. These include as omega-3 fatty acids, dietary fiber, probiotics and antioxidants. Some functional foods are also bred with the intention of improving their nutrient content or appearance. This is the case with some vegetables and fruits.

What are some examples of functional foods? The majority of functional foods are plants, such as vegetables, fruits like berries, herbs and spices. However, this does not mean you need to be a vegan/vegetarian to benefit from functional foods. Certain foods that are sourced from animals, including fatty fish like salmon and organ meats like chicken or beef liver, can also be considered functional foods due to their high nutrient content. 

So, you may have looked at this description and come away with a rather leery look.

If you read that description and went, “hey, doesn’t that mean most foods are functional foods?”, then you are correct, because the term “functional foods” appears to be more of a fad, marketing ploy that really encapsulates everything outside of the heavily processed foods. If you’re eating minimally processed foods, you’ve likely been eating plenty of functional foods (that should probably tell you that this post is not intended to be taken too seriously 😉).

In essence, our heavily calorie-filled Thanksgiving plate may be comprised of foods that may actually do us some good, and if these foods are good for us in some way why not find an excuse to eat more of it?

So this is a super not-serious look into a few foods that you may sit at your coming Thanksgiving table.

A spoonful of cranberry sauce

Serving as an enigma among the Thanksgiving bounty is the strange, cylindrical anomaly that is canned cranberry sauce.

Image from eathabesha.

The strange object is usually avoided by many, and may be one of the most hated items according to one survey¹. Not many may take the time to make it themselves, and may relegate themselves to Ocean Spray to do deal with all of their cranberrying² needs. It's also an easy cop-out to to force onto those who feel the need to "help" feel helpful.

Aside from being the the gelatinous³ slop that rears its head during the holidays like that crass uncle, cranberries are generally known as being useful in helping with UTIs (unlike the crass uncle...).

Cranberries are a New World food, and many Native American tribes utilized the berry in various ways, including as a food source, as a natural dye, and as a remedy for various ailments.

National Geographic notes the following:

The Algonquin, Chippewa, and Cree, among others, gathered wild cranberries where they could find them in what is now Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Wisconsin, all the way west to Oregon and Washington, and north to areas of British Columbia and Quebec, according to Devon Mihesuah, a professor at the University of Kansas and an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation. The berry was called sassamenesh (by the Algonquin) and ibimi (by the Wampanoag and Lenni-Lenape), which translates literally as "bitter" or "sour berries." Cranberries were used for everything from cooking to dyes for textiles to medicines.

According to Mihesuah, who also runs the American Indian Health and Diet Project, the Native Americans ate cranberries as fresh fruit, dried the fruit and formed them into cakes to store, and made tea out of the leaves. The Inuktitut of eastern Canada used the cranberry leaves as a tobacco substitute. There were also a range of nonculinary uses for the berry, says Mihesuah. Cree boiled the fruit and used it to dye porcupine quills for clothing and jewelry. Chippewa used cranberries as bait to trap the snowshoe hare.

Given the reddish, purplish hue of cranberries we shouldn’t be surprised to find that cranberries are a rich source of the flavonoids called Anthocyanins. However, unique to cranberries and several other berries are the presence of Proanthocyanidins, which act as both offensive and defensive molecules for the berry in fighting stressors. It’s worth noting that other fruits and plants contain Proanthocyanidins, but it’s believed that berries serve as one of the highest, most accessible sources.

From Blumberg, et al. The above image shows some of the bioactive compounds sourced from cranberries, with Procyanidins located in the middle. Underneath the different categories are R substitutions, which note the different structures when one replaces the R’s with the given functional groups listed. Note the structural similarities between Anthocyanins and Proanthocyanidins above.

It’s interesting to note that the Blumberg, et al.⁴ review comments that heating of cranberries under acidic conditions cleaves the bonds in Proanthocyanidins to release the Anthocyanins, and so processed sources of cranberries such as cranberry sauce may be low in these compounds, although that shouldn’t dissuade one from eating cranberry-containing foods as Anthocyanins provide their own rich source of health benefits.

Many of these molecules act as free-radical scavengers, providing antioxidant properties. They also may provide some antimicrobial properties, hence its association with UTI as a viable treatment, although it should be noted that the literature has found mixed results in the use of cranberries, likely owing to differences in cranberry source (e.g. fresh, juice, etc.) and dosing of said sources.

A quick summary from Nemzer et al.⁵ notes the following benefits of cranberries:

European colonists who arrived in North America immediately recognized cranberries’ healing powers, such as poultice for wounds and cure for blood poisoning [1]. Cranberries best-known benefits have been to treat urinary tract infections, which is due to proanthocyanidins (PACs). These tannins prevent Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria from attaching to cells in the urinary tract and causing infection [2]. Today, more health benefits have been shown due to the phytochemicals, anthocyanins, PACs, and flavonols, found in cranberries. They reduce certain infections, promote a healthy heart, decrease inflammation associated with chronic disease and aging and support digestive health [2,31]. Cranberries also contain phytochemicals that act as antioxidants, which reduce oxidative damage to cells that can lead to cancer, heart disease, and other degenerative diseases [2,31].

And concludes their review with the following:

Cranberries represent a rich source of phenolic acids and flavonoids that have been linked to various health benefits. Cranberry fruit phytonutrients include anthocyanins, phenolic acids, flavonols, flavan-3-ols, proanthocyanidins, triterpenoids and their antioxidant activities. It has been shown that consumption of cranberry offers a reliable protection from and prevention of many chronic diseases. In general, cranberry fruit has cardioprotective, anti-carcinogenic, anti-diabetic, anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, antiseptic, antibacterial, antiviral, and other effects. All this information will potentially add to an already high level of interest toward cranberry cultivars and should certainly be incorporated as an integral part of healthy, nutritious eating, and at formulation of new functional food ingredients and dietary supplements.

Remember that the comments above are very broad (this isn’t an all-too serious post, after all), and most sources of cranberries tend to contain a lot of sugar to offset the tartness and bitterness of cranberries, which may itself some of the health benefits of cranberries.⁶

With that being said, it’s always fun to look at some of the foods we eat and look at it more than just sustenance.

The cranberry seems to have been rather maligned, likely due to its eerie shape and the people who are scared of adding some fruit to their meat.

Aside from being sugar-laden, cranberries may be a good source of antioxidants and other compounds that may provide a wide array of health benefits.

And rather than grabbing the canned stuff from the cupboard, consider the fresh stuff. It’s a hell of a lot better tasting, and you can control the sugar content all the better!

Image from Cooking Canuck. I haven’t tried this recipe and am just using the image.

This is part of the series, and hopefully I’ll throw in another food or two which I hope to release later on.

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1. I haven’t looked at this survey, but apparently over 40% of millennials would rather give up sex for a month than deal with the stress of hosting Thanksgiving dinner. I guess it’s a good thing that most millennials aren’t having sex to begin with? Or maybe that’s where the stress is coming from… 🤷‍♂️

2. Apparently “cranberrying” is a word. I was winging it there!

3. Cranberries are high in a polysaccharide called pectin, which provide the similar thickening powers as gelatin. Pectin is found in several foods including various apples, and cranberries are notorious for having a lot of pectin, so you don’t actually need to add a thickener to cranberries.

4. Jeffrey B. Blumberg, Terri A. Camesano, Aedin Cassidy, Penny Kris-Etherton, Amy Howell, Claudine Manach, Luisa M. Ostertag, Helmut Sies, Ann Skulas-Ray, Joseph A. Vita, Cranberries and Their Bioactive Constituents in Human Health, Advances in Nutrition, Volume 4, Issue 6, November 2013, Pages 618–632, https://doi.org/10.3945/an.113.004473

5. Nemzer, B. V., Al-Taher, F., Yashin, A., Revelsky, I., & Yashin, Y. (2022). Cranberry: Chemical Composition, Antioxidant Activity and Impact on Human Health: Overview. Molecules, 27(5), 1503. MDPI AG. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/molecules27051503

6. Many recipes throw in a 12 oz. bag of cranberries with a cup of sugar, which may be rather ridiculous. Making homemade cranberry sauce allows you to control for the sugar content, and even add sugar from natural sources such as oranges/orange juice and other fruit sources which can help one feel better in indulging.