Nutraceutical- Nutrition that cures

Nutrition to cure disease.

Functional food provides the body with the required amount of vitamins, fats, proteins, carbohydrates, etc, needed for healthy survival. When functional food aids in the prevention or treatment of disease or disorder, it is called a Nutraceutical. Term Nutraceutical was coined from "nutrition" and "pharmaceutical" in 1989 by Stephen DeFelice, (Foundation for Innovation in Medicine) and Cranford. According to DeFelice, nutraceutical can be defined as, "a food (or part of a food) that provides medical or health benefits, including the prevention and/or treatment of a disease." Examples of nutraceuticals include fortified dairy products and citrus fruits.

Thus , Nutraceuticals must not only supplement the diet but should also aid in the prevention or treatment of disease or disorder. Nutraceuticals are represented for use as a conventional food or as the sole item of meal or diet.

Another example on this topic in South Indian food habit is that the coffee drunk there is invariably mixed with “chicory”. This is a perennial plant with bright blue flowers, cultivated as a salad plant. Chicory is rich in the fibrous polysaccharide inulin. Unlike cellulose, which does not easily dissolve in water, inulin is a soluble dietary fibre. Since it is resistant to digestion by the commonly occurring enzymes, it serves its fibrous function well. Inulin is thus not easily absorbed in the small intestines; it reaches the large intestines or colon essentially intact, where it is fermented by the resident bacteria (mainly Probiotics). It is for this reason that a molecule like inulin is called a pre-biotic (non-digestible food material that selectively stimulates the growth of health - promoting bacteria like lactobacilli and bifidobacteria) which digest it and feed themselves and the host. These symbiotic microbes colonize our large bowels at the expense of harmful ones such as coliform. A pre-biotic is a "fertilizer", as it were, for the symbiotic bacteria that thrive in our bodies.

One of the major examples of functional foods in Asian region is Tofu. Tofu is soya bean curd. It is low in cholesterol and saturated fat, and also contains compounds called isoflavones (with hard to pronounce names like genistein and daidzein) that may help prevent everything from cancer to osteoporosis. The USFDA reviewed as many as 41 clinical studies before it concluded that "based on the totality of publicly available scientific evidence, there is significant agreement to support the relationship between consumption of soy protein included in diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, and a lowering in the risk of coronary heart disease". Of 25 grams of soy protein that is recommended in our daily diet, 45 mg are isoflavones (A report published in THE HINDU (online edition), Thursday, April 27, 2000).