What are Functional Foods?
Functional foods are “food products that produce specific benefits, or that contain significant levels of biologically active components capable of improving consumer health, in addition to their traditional basic ingredients”. The considerable and increasing attention given to this category of foods is related to their additional value due to their disease prevention properties. Functional foods are seen as health promoters and may be associated with a reduction in the risk of certain diseases.
However, functional foods alone do not guarantee good health, but are part of a whole that includes good nutrition with balanced foods, good handling practices and genetics. Thus the production of healthier animals leads to gains in productivity for the animal rearing activity, and the offer of animal products with greater final consumer safety. This is a worldwide tendency in the production of foods, aiming at healthier products with less chemical residues and free of human pathogens, consequently showing less consumer risks. Functional foods may become a viable and healthy alternative to substitute growth promoters and to reduce the use of the antibiotics and other chemicals available for animal nutrition and therapy.
Human functional foods represent a great research area throughout the world and a highly promising business market. Just in the USA, the market for functional foods represented 16.7 billion dollars in 1998. The positive image produced by these products in the USA, resulting from their impact on health and well being, stimulated a growth rate of 10.9% in the period.