What are functional foods?
Foods are defined as functional when, beyond their basic nutritional properties, their ability to positively influence one or more physiological functions is scientifically demonstrated. A fundamental prerogative of the same foods is also that of helping to preserve or improve the state of health and / or reduce the risk of onset of diseases related to the diet.
Examples are tomatoes, garlic, yogurt, legumes, salmon, walnuts and broccoli. For the newborn the best functional food available is breast milk. They do not fall into the category of dietary supplements and foods, as they are foreign to the normal eating habits of the healthy population.
Obviously, before advertising the functional properties of a food, solid experimental evidence is needed, capable of demonstrating its efficacy and safety. The entire process involves distinct stages: first of all, it starts with a statistical or empirical observation that recognizes beneficial properties for the maintenance of health and the prevention of diseases in a given food; subsequently we try to discover other foods sharing the same characteristic. These two elements form the basis of subsequent biological studies, performed to ascertain the existence of molecules responsible for their beneficial characteristics. Finally, the same components can be used for:
- enrich those foods in which these substances are already naturally present (enriched functional foods).
- confer a certain characteristic to foods that do not originally possess it (supplemented functional foods).
Usefulness of functional foods
The ability to improve the health and well-being of their customers by reducing the risk of disease has prompted many food industries to invest in the burgeoning functional food sector. On the other hand, consumers' interest in food, intended as a source of well-being and health, is growing in tandem with the ever-increasing number of information campaigns that warn of the dangers of so-called "fattening" foods. Never as in these In the last decades, in industrialized countries, there has been an abundance of food; this excess has practically eradicated the pathologies of nutritional deficiencies but has opened the doors to "another disease, equally worrying, called obesity. Why then the need for functional foods? because in many cases the food on our tables is high in calories, but poor in essential substances for our well-being such as fiber, vitamins and mineral salts. Furthermore, it is important not to underestimate the possibility that some substances, even if they have no nutritional value, can, on their own, contribute to improving the level of general well-being of the organism. This category does not include old vitamins, but "third generation substances" such as inulin, fructoligosaccharides, probiotics, flavonoids and other antioxidant agents, whose beneficial properties have been discovered relatively recently.
The future of functional foods
According to the definitions given so far, the list of functional foods is almost infinite: fiber, by virtue of its prebiotic, antitumor and stabilizing properties on glycemic values, makes most of the foods of plant origin functional. Iron, carnosine and vitamin B12 do the same with meat, while the high content of polyunsaturated fatty acids makes the fish functional.
The most interesting aspect therefore concerns the so-called enriched functional foods and supplemented functional foods: on the shelves of many Italian supermarkets you can already find "fortified" cereals with vitamins and minerals, while in the United States and Japan the spread of drinks and other functional foods However, even in Europe these products are increasingly polarizing the interest of that segment of the population more attentive to their own health.
Just think of the boom in the consumption of probiotics, prebiotics and symbiotics (for their respective definitions see the article: lactic ferments). Even drinking yoghurts enriched with plant sterols (those substances that would help control cholesterol) testify to the growing interest towards functional foods.
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