Enhanced Foods: Healthier?

Cruise the aisles of most supermarkets and you're likely to see extraordinary health claims screaming out at you from every shelf. Heart-healthy cereals. Yogurt with plant sterols. Diet cola with vitamins. Even the baddest foods on the block seem to want you to believe that they've reformed.

It's true that many of us are not getting enough of the nutrients we need most to fight off the diseases that top the post-40 worry list. One USDA study found that women over 40 don't get enough vitamin B6, dietary fiber, calcium, or zinc. And we're borderline deficient in copper, phosphorous, thiamine, and iron -- nutrients that may help ward off cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, cognitive decline, and more.

Certain fortified foods have indeed bettered our health -- usually when the added nutrient is difficult to get elsewhere (iodized salt, milk with vitamin D, and cereal enhanced with folic acid come to mind). But don't let this sway you into thinking that supplementing your diet with souped-up foods will necessarily help. The added nutrients in soft drinks, refined cereal, candy bars, and other foods in the nutritional reject bin won't make them the stars that nutrient-dense whole foods already are. In addition, the modified foods may put you at risk for damaging overdoses of certain nutrients. "Women who are not menstruating can get too much iron, for instance," says Kristen D'Anci, PhD, of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. And too much iron may be linked to heart disease.

So what foods are the best bets for keeping us healthy as we age -- and which are just masquerading as disease fighters? Read on.

MORE articles in this Topic