Achievements and discoveries as to functional foods in Japan (813.14)

Abstract

The term and concept of “functional foods” were created in the course of “Grant‐in‐Aid” research sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in 1980s. Functional foods are defined as those that modulate body function and prevent certain diseases. Since then, numerous studies have been conducted as to the physiological functions of food factors. The Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare established a policy to approve some of the selected functional foods as “foods for specified health uses (FoSHU)” in 1991 to share the benefit of results obtained by the research works and provide people with healthy foods manufactured on the basis of scientific achievements. At present, the Customers Affairs Agency is responsible for the approval, and over 1,000 items have been approved as FoSHU. FoSHU products are categorized into 10 according to their functions such as modulation of gastrointestinal condition, serum cholesterol level, serum triacylglycerol level, blood pressure and blood sugar level, acceleration of mineral absorption and promotion of bone health. Interestingly, functional factors in products of the same function often differ in their mechanism of action, while the same functional factor is contained in products of different functions. Therefore, this presentation will summarize some of the functional factors according to their properties and characteristics to get a hint for the strategy to design novel functional foods.