Functional foods and nutraceuticals with special focus on mother and child care

Abstract

Science has shown that diet affects human health. Therefore, healthy diets promote good health. The suggestion that certain food components and nutrients are associated with the prevention / treatment of chronic diseases such as cancer, coronary heart disease (CHD), and osteoporosis has encouraged consumer’s interest in functional foods and natural health products. A nutraceutical is a product, isolated or purified from foods that is generally sold in medicinal forms not usually associated with food. A functional food is similar in appearance to, or may be, a conventional food, is consumed as part of a usual diet, and is demonstrated to have physiological benefits and/ or reduce the risk of chronic disease beyond basic nutritional functions. The creation of nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics, two fields with distinct approaches to elucidate the interaction between diet and genes but with a common ultimate goal to optimize health through the personalization of diet, provide powerful approaches to unravel the complex relationship between nutritional molecules, genetic polymorphisms, and the biological system as a whole. Ayurveda as a way of life and habits is the most ideally suited systems to inspire a discovery path to nutraceuticals. Ayurveda, enables sub grouping of individuals into three major categories namely: Vata, Pitta and Kapha, based on Prakriti. Research with this line will add a newer dimension to functional food science as having great potential for the development of new food science, technology and industry. The emerging disciplines branching from genomics such as transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, RNomics, miRNomics, liponomics, fluxomics, toxigenomics etc. will, further facilitate these kinds of research.