QandAs: Health

What Is Functional Food?

Answer:
Functional Food, also known as Medicinal Food, is defined

as the form of healthy food that claims to have specific health-promoting benefits.

Functional food can promote health of an individual along with providing different nutrients. The concept of functional food was originally been derived from Japan in 1980s where such food was labeled as Food for Specified Health Use (FOSHU). In US, such foods may be qualified by how much research backs a certain claim. Some of the categories of functional foods include processed food, vitamin-enriched products, and fermented foods with live cultures or probiotics.

Functional food is one of the emerging fields in food science due to an increase in the number of health-conscious consumers. However, one has to remember that functional foods are not magic bullets but only the health enhancing addition to an active lifestyle.