Nutraceuticals: An Alternative of Medicine

In recent years, the increase in demand for enhancing health by nutritive supplements and adequate living standards has been greatly considered in order to decrease medical costs and increase human efficiency and quality of life. Creation of well-being nourishments with bioactive compounds (useful in nourishments) announced as one of the top patterns of the food business as a choice to tranquilize treatment for development of human well-being. The functional food market is large and growing in most of the countries in the world. Functional food production would be cost-effective due to the possibility of launching numerous new functional food products within the existing markets without the large amount of investment. In this emerging market, there is a more interest for scientists and manufacturers to achieve more information about the nutrition and adequate lifestyles. Basically, the impacts and importance of nutraceuticals and functional foods on human health are presented in this chapter. We have summed up the basic related terms to nutraceuticals like functional foods, dietary supplements, designer foods, medical foods, pharmafoods, phytochemicals, and so forth. There are different types of diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, obesity, diabetes, cancer, immune system-based diseases, chronic inflammatory disorders, degenerative diseases, various types of depressions, hypertension, memory disorders, etc. which are controlled by functional foods, somehow. The nutrients provided by nutraceuticals are listed in tables. There are many sources of functional foods like fruit and fruit products, vegetables, marine food and their products, spices, etc. that are considered to have health beneficial properties. Additionally, some bioactive compounds and vitamins essential for human body are also discussed. Some compounds like chitin and chitosan are also used as nutraceuticals and functional foods. These compounds have drawn the attentions of researchers in last two decades.