BELIEVE THE HYPE
They were identified using AI, but what are hyperfoods – and what do they do?
We know that you know eating enough plant foods is essential for living a longer, healthier life, thanks to their nutritional might. But as cutting-edge technology pinpoints exactly which of your five-a-day contain the most potent concentrations of these health-supporting molecules, what does this discovery mean for your plate?
Atop chef and a computational scientist walk into a conference hall. It sounds like the start of a bad joke, and it’s true that Jozef Youssef and Dr Kirill Veselkov are, in many ways, an unlikely pairing. The former is a gastronomy aficionado who has spent stints working at luxury London hotels such as The Dorchester, as well as Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck in Berkshire, crafting nitrous oxide-infused canapés and bacon-flavoured ice cream. The latter is a lecturer and researcher on computational medicine at Imperial College London who’s spent years developing tools to decipher scientific data at breakneck speed.
But when the pair bumped into each other at a conference in the picturesque Italian province of Grosseto in 2018, they spent three days drinking wine, dining on local fare and talking about how, together, they could drastically change the future of nutrition. Three years on, they’ve unveiled what could be one of the most novel and exciting developments in nutritional science for years: hyperfoods, a brand new class of food that researchers believe could help you ward off cancer.
These disease-busting ingredients are rich in potentially curative molecules or compounds that have been identified and shared for the very first time as a result of state-of-the-art AI and machine-learning tools. As cutting edge as the science behind them sounds, what’s so exciting is that these aren’t your average headline-grabbing nutritional heroes. In contrast to the pricey, crying-out-to-be-photographed nature of many superfoods (if you haven’t snapped a charcoal latte from above, then where were you in 2017?), hyperfoods include the kind of ingredients you might load into your trolley on the weekly shop. Foods like broad beans, carrots and cabbage; foods that are otherwise ordinary, but contain rather extraordinary components. And their discovery wouldn’t have been possible were it not for the combined brainpower of Dr Veselkov and Youssef.
Before their collaboration, Dr Veselkov had been working with the Vodafone Dreamlab, an initiative the telecommunications company launched in 2015 to use the collective processing power of smartphones to speed up scientific research. Download the Dreamlab app and every time your phone is plugged in and connected to the internet, it’s used to power AI projects analysing scientific data. Dr Veselkov had been using this programme to pore through data on anti-cancer therapies and identify new molecules and compounds that could help fight the
This discovery will drastically change the way you look at that wilting cabbage in your fridge
disease. But when he met Youssef – who’s been searching for ways to apply the latest science to gastronomy for years – the incurably curious chef suggested Dr Veselkov use this same processing power to turn his attention to detecting which foods contained anti-cancer molecules. Interest piqued, he did – and what he discovered has the potential to drastically change the way you look at that cabbage wilting at the back of your fridge.
MOLECULAR GASTRONOMY
Dietitians have long known that foods can be broken down into fats, carbohydrates and proteins; then there are smaller micronutrients, such as vitamins and minerals. But what Dr Veselkov has managed to discover are 110 more components that experts weren’t paying attention to before. Many of them – polyphenols, flavonoids, terpenoids, botanical polysaccharides – belong to the groups of chemicals responsible for colour, aroma and texture in food. It’s been welldocumented that these types of chemicals have serious health-boosting creds: flavanols, first discovered in 1938 by a Hungarian scientist studying citrus fruits, have been highlighted many times before in these pages for their potent health benefits. But, until now, the full breadth and diversity of these plant-based compounds has remained largely unexplored. ‘That’s why we call it the dark matter of nutrition,’ says Dr Veselkov, in his soft Slavic accent.
He explains that you consume thousands of these molecules every day, which interact with your biology. Scientists are already aware of some of these interactions – for instance, there’s evidence that cocoa flavanols interact with the microbiome and enhance the growth of beneficial gut bacteria. But many of the possible interactions remain unknown. ‘Using conventional methods, they’re ferociously difficult to analyse,’ he adds. He’s putting it mildly; with just three bioactive molecules, there are a mind-boggling three trillion different possible ways in which they could interact with your biology. ‘Using conventional methods to analyse those would be like taking a bike to explore the galaxy.’ But using smartphone powered super computers, Dr Veselkov has been able to look at 8,000 individual molecules, all the different possible interactions, and then identify the specific ingredients with the highest concentration of the most effective cancer-beating molecules. That means rather than having a vague idea that some of these plant-based compounds are good for you, you’ve got a science backed list of hyperfoods and can be pretty confident that you’re getting a potent mix of disease-beating bioactive ingredients. (If you want to know such molecules interact with your biology to produce this cancer-protecting effect, sorry, the research hasn’t got there... yet.)
It’s not just the dynamic duo who are getting hyped up over their discovery, either. Harley Street dietitian Rachel Clarkson is ‘extremely excited’ about what this awareness around hyperfoods can contribute to our existing understanding of what connects nutrition and deadly diseases, such as cancer. ‘We already know that there are certain foods that can prevent the mechanisms that cause cancer,’ she explains, citing foods rich in plant-based compounds known as phytochemicals, which can help suppress cellular processes that lead to the disease. ‘These can help detoxify carcinogens in the body, repair mutated DNA and reduce inflammation – the underlying cause of most chronic diseases, including cancer.’ Research into epigenetics (a field of study looking at how lifestyle modifications can alter the way cells ‘read’ genes) has, she adds, shown that certain foods can turn cancer cells on and off. But this new research provides a much deeper and more precise level of insight into the specific molecules and molecular structures that make certain foods so effective in the fight against disease.
HYPE FEASTS
Which all means, what, for your nutrition? Well, unlike previous research in the field of cancer and diet, this isn’t about reducing your intake of bacon and burnt toast (both of which have previously been linked with the disease). ‘Most diets are about what you can’t eat, shouldn’t eat or should cut down on,’ adds Youssef. ‘With hyperfoods, we’re saying: “This is what you should be adding to your diet.”’ And given that the most potent sources of these ‘anti-cancer molecules’ are the kind of ingredients you might find in your nan’s fridge, the pair believe that educating people about their effects could contribute to disease prevention on a global scale. ‘We know that so many of the illnesses and diseases we have at the moment – from poor metabolic health to obesity, diabetes and various forms of cancer – all relate back to diet and dietary choices,’ adds Youssef. Quite. According to the World Cancer Research Fund, up to 40% of all cancers can be prevented by changes to diet and lifestyle. ‘And it’s not necessarily the junk food that’s increasing your risk of developing life-threatening diseases, but the lack of healthy food in your diet,’ adds Dr Veselkov.
In short, by foregrounding these new tech-sourced nutritional properties, the pair hope they’ll be able to do for the humble cabbage what Beyoncé’s ‘kale’ sweatshirt did for the curly leafed green in 2014 and, ultimately, encourage people to adopt a healthier diet. And that’s where their unlikely union could become the secret ingredient to success. ‘When we made the discovery, I began starting my morning with a cabbage smoothie, but it tasted awful,’ laughs Dr Veselkov. ‘So I had a chat with Jozef and we realised you have to incorporate these ingredients into delicious foods to be able to reach people. Otherwise, I don’t think there’d be much hope of success.’ So, once the softly spoken scientist had completed his analysis to precisely locate these cancer-beating molecules in everyday foods, it was Youssef ’s turn to show off his skills, creating a cookbook of dishes that are both affordable and easy to make – no gastro gymnastics required. The collection of mouth-watering recipes includes fig, apple and blueberry granola, pasta bake packed with carrot, celery and cabbage and even a hyperfoods cocktail containing black tea, orange zest and a dash of bourbon.
When it comes to giving your meals the hyperfood treatment, Clarkson recommends approaching them as you would all fruits and vegetables: aiming to ‘eat the rainbow’ by consuming a diverse mix of colours and varieties to maximise your intake of the variations of the bioactive molecules they contain. You could make a quick batch of roasted carrots and parsnips with rosemary, or add oregano and a drizzle of olive oil to a portion of broad beans, she suggests. For dessert, create a fruit salad with pomegranate, sweet orange and mint. Or simply add a sprinkle of hyperfoods to your morning latte by creating your own spice mix, she suggests, combining nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and ginger. While Youssef recommends cooking from scratch to get the most out of the ingredients, he cautions against getting too hung up on the quantities of specific hyperfoods; though the machines in Dr Veselkov’s lab can identify with nearperfect accuracy which molecules can be found where, that same precision doesn’t extend to your plate. ‘There’s a need for clinical trials before we can say anything definitive about what these foods can do,’ cautions Youssef. The signs are good, though; each one
of these hyperfoods contains molecules that have a likeness of 70% or more to clinically approved cancer drugs. But whether or not they’ll interact in exactly the same way with your highly complex and individual biological systems will need further study to determine.
It’s important to note, too, that, powerful as they may be, hyperfoods will only ever be one part of the protective equation. Drinking too much alcohol, eating too many processed foods and not consuming enough fibre can all increase your likelihood of developing certain cancers; while getting enough sleep, reducing stress and regular exercise are all important, too. And it’s key to remember that you only have so much control over whether you develop the illness, adds Clarkson. ‘Unfortunately, there’s a proportion of people who will get cancer regardless of how healthily they eat, and regardless of their lifestyle choices.’ And since cancer, and health in general, is such an emotive topic, she adds, it’s important not to become obsessive with any one type of food or piece of research.
Health is multifactorial, and there’s no such thing as one fix, whether you’re talking about lasting weight loss, eating for immunity or, in this case, nutrition that can help prevent deadly diseases. No discovery is going to orient a healthpromoting lifestyle away from what you probably already know: eat a plantrich, varied diet and move regularly. But hats off to this unlikely pair for making us look twice at that cabbage. Nutrition’s dark matter is, it seems, hiding in plain sight.
‘With hyperfoods, we’re saying: “This is what you should be adding to your diet”’