What is nutraceuticals?<7h4>
Nutraceutical is a term that derives from the crasis of the words nutrition and pharmaceuticals and studies the pharmaceutical and nutritional properties of foods.
The nutraceutical is therefore a scientific discipline dedicated to the study of foods and feed materials that have a beneficial effect on human health.
It is a very vast field, ranging from food products to their transformation to food intake or in the form of supplements.
There are many foods, especially fruit, vegetables or herbs that have beneficial effects on human health and well-being and the awareness is growing that a suitable diet accompanied by natural supplements is very suitable for humans.
The nutraceutical in particular focuses on nutritional substances that, added to the normal.
The benefits of nutraceuticals
Nutrition, help humans improve their health: these substances are called natural supplements.
Nutraceutical products can help prevent serious diseases and overcome discomforts such as problems with insomnia or constipation or allergies.
These discomforts are often the result of a wrong or incomplete diet.
Foods are increasingly sophisticated from the point of view of combinations of tastes, but unfortunately, fundamental elements such as vitamins are often poor.
Nutraceuticals deal with the so-called ASI foods, namely Appetizable, Sating and Low-calorie foods. All fruit is ASI.
Meat, fish and eggs are ASI if cooked in a dietary way, not fat.
A nutraceutical is a “food-drug” that is a food that is good for health and that can help you feel better.
In cases where diet or eating habits are poor in ASI foods, it is useful to resort to food supplements.
The supplements indicated by the nutraceutical must, however, be produced, transported and stored at controlled temperatures, otherwise their effects may be impaired and their benefits compromised.
The modern nutraceutical market was born in Japan during the 1980s.
Examples of nutraceuticals are probiotics, antioxidants, polyunsaturated fatty acids (omega-3, omega-6), vitamins and enzyme complexes.
They are typically used to prevent chronic diseases, improve health, delay the aging process and increase life expectancy.
Nutraceuticals can be taken by introducing into the diet suitable foods, sometimes enriched with a specific active ingredient (for example, milk enriched with vitamin D or omega-3 acids).
Or they can be taken in the form of food supplements in liquid formulations, in tablets or capsules.
Examples of nutraceutical foods
Some examples of foods with nutraceutical benefits are:
- red grapes, which contain the antioxidant resveratrol;
- broccoli, able to prevent various forms of cancer;
- soy, which contains isoflavones to improve arterial health;
- Red wine
- the blueberry
- olive oil
- flax seeds
- the omega-3 contained in fish