Nutraceuticals: Recent Developments and Future Prospectives

Abstract

Recent scientific research has focused on food components that have possible health benefits beyond traditional nutritional value. Nutraceuticals as an amalgamation of the terms nutritional and pharmaceutical refers to foods or parts of foods that provide medical or health benefits, including the prevention and/or treatment of disease. There is growing recognition of the potential role for nutraceuticals in helping to reduce health risks and improve health quality. In the global marketplace nutraceuticals have become a multi-billion dollar industry. Nutraceuticals may range from isolated nutrients, herbal products, dietary supplements and diets to genetically engineered “designer” foods and processed products such as cereals, soups, juices and beverages. Major chemical groups now recognized as having potential health promoting effects are the phenolics, flavonoids, alkaloids, carotenoids, pre- and probiotics, phytosterols, tannins, fatty acids, terpenoids, saponins, and soluble and insoluble dietary fibres. Some examples of relationships between nutraceuticals and health benefits include the importance of calcium in preventing osteoporosis, foliate in the prevention of neural tube defects in infants and the role of decreasing dietary fat and increasing fiber in the prevention of colon cancer. Advances in the areas of food technology, food biochemistry and the nutritional sciences (including nutritional genomics) are providing consumers with access to fresh and often supplemented produce with recognizable health benefits that previously were not available. New methods being used by the functional food industry to isolate, characterize, extract and purify nutraceuticals from microorganisms, plant and animal sources are resulting in decreased costs to the industry as well as providing new options for use of nutraceuticals. The health promoting effects of nutraceuticals likely are due to a complex mix of biochemical and cellular interactions which together promote overall health of the individual. Nutraceuticals may function: as substrates in metabolic reactions or cofactors of key metabolic enzymes; as ligands that promote or compete with biochemical interactions at the cell surface or with intercellular receptors which can enhance absorption and assimilation of important macro- and micronutrients; and as agents which selectively promote the growth of bacteria (especially lactic acid bacteria) with health benefits in the gastrointestinal system and compete with or partially eliminate the growth of harmful bacteria. In addition these agents may act as enzyme inhibitors, absorbents or toxicant scavengers that can associate with and help remove damaging substances or toxins from the body. Application of modern approaches in genomics, proteomics and metabolomics to the study of genetics and the biochemistry of functional foods derived from plants and animals has potential to characterize these products in a better way. Moreover, these approaches will enable us to modify product characteristics with precision. Considerable attention now is being paid to characterization of the natural biodiversity found throughout the planet. Plants in particular, present opportunities to alter their biochemical makeup to adapt to new applications and challenges, as well as providing a diverse array of growth responses that can be exploited to allow their use under many different regional ecological conditions. This chapter will provide definition, introduction, worldwide status and classification of nutraceuticals and its significance and nutrigenomics. Further, the regulatory status and recent development in nutraceuticals are discussed.