Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals in Health Maintenance

Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals in Health Maintenance

The nature of the relationship between food and sickness is a very current and controversial topic. Distinct information has spread from the network of researchers and the media regarding the possible interests of a large series of foods and nutrients, such as rice bran, vitamin C (ascorbic acid), vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol), carotenoids (tetraterpenoids in plants), palm oil (edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp [reddish pulp] of the fruit of the oil palms), in the curative meaning and obstruction distinct ailments. The confusion, along with the wide range of bio-compounds, usually shared, that carry various disputable claims concerning the impact of their consumption on well-being, causes users to be distrustful and unsure concerning the feeders’ value of added food bio-compounds. In many countries, including the US, government food for appraisal bodies have authorized the commercialization of certain food bio-compounds that state their well-being impact. “Functional” foods and nutraceuticals are authorized on the basis of scientific theory or hypothesis and are allowed to clearly state on their labels the link between the nutrients they contain and various sicknesses. There is no internationally acknowledged attestation of functional foods and nutraceutical, as foods that provide health benefits beyond basic nutrition are more a hypothesis than a well-determined category of food products, but they can broadly be considered foods that provide more than just nutrition, earmarking supplementary interests from a physiological point of view for the consumer.