Chapter 37 - The commercial microalgae-based foods

Abstract

Microalgae are an excellent source of nutraceuticals due to their rich nutrient profile and bioactive compounds. With the increasing global food demand and the challenges associated with climate change, it will be difficult for agriculture and livestock resources to achieve a sustainable food supply. Microalgae-incorporated food products can play a significant role in targeting community malnutrition in rural and developing economies. Additionally, the emergence of new diseases paves the way for producing food products utilizing the pharmaceutical properties of microalgae. Microalgae can enrich the nutritional content of conventional food and feed preparation and beneficially impact human and animal health owing to their original chemical composition, high protein content, balanced amino acid pattern, and other bioactive compounds more efficiently than traditional crops. Microalgal products such as dried biomass, extracted lipids, and isolated bioactive compounds are emerging food and feed with high-quality nutraceutical properties, pharmaceutical characteristics, and biological qualities and should be maintained while developing more innovative microalgae-based food products. However, the development of microalgae-based food products faces technological challenges, consumer acceptance, large-scale production, etc. This review summarizes an overview on the use of microalgal biomass and their bioactive compounds and current scientific and industrial developments on microalgae-based food products, evaluates the evidence regarding the health benefits of food products incorporated with microalgae and critical challenges faced such as risk assessment, biosafety, and regulatory issues by the microalgae-based food industry. Furthermore, this review also covers the future potential of microalgae-based food products.