Abstract

Changes in lifestyle and demographics, rising consumer incomes, and shifting preferences due to advanced knowledge about the relationships between food and health contribute to generate new needs in the food supply. Today, the role of food is not only intended as hunger satisfaction and nutrient supply but also as an opportunity to prevent nutrition-related diseases and improve physical and mental well-being. For this reason, there is a growing interest in the novel or less well-known plant foods that offer an opportunity for health maintenance. Recently, interest in plant foods and underutilized fruits is continuously growing, and agrobiodiversity exploitation offers effective and extraordinary potentialities. Plant foods could be an important source of health-promoting compounds and functional food ingredients with beneficial properties: the description of the quality and physicochemical traits, the identification and quantification of bioactive compounds, and the evaluation of their biological activities are important to assess plant food efficacy as functional foods or source of food supplement ingredients.

Highlights

  • Changes in lifestyle and demographics, rising consumer incomes, and shifting preferences due to advanced knowledge about the relationships between food and health contribute to generate new needs in the food supply

  • It is important to define the key relations between the proposed concepts with the main actors involved in the processes and studies for the functional food development, namely: the nutritionist, the specialist, and the food technologist

  • These same molecules show specific health-promoting benefits and effects in men and animals; clinical, epidemiological, in vitro, and in vivo studies have demonstrated that a diet rich in plant foods may reduce the risk of some degenerative diseases

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Changes in lifestyle and demographics, rising consumer incomes, and shifting preferences due to advanced knowledge about the relationships between food and health contribute to generate new needs in the food supply. Nutraceuticals are detailed as food products purified, produced, or extracted from an animal or plant source (e.g., antioxidants from fish oils, blueberries, elk velvet), or produced from pressed, powdered, or dried plant material and demonstrated to present a health-promoting benefit or to protect against several chronic diseases [3,4].

Objectives
Results
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call