Role of Functional food in Therapeutic Nutrition: Brief Review

A fortified food which delivers all health benefits along with vitamins and minerals is defined as “Functional Food”. Nutrition is important for good health and defense from various diseases. There are two types of physiologically active components in foods known as phytochemicals and zoochemicals. Ideally, there should be a scientific relevance between benefits of function food and human health. However, all the functional foods do not full fill this criterion of scientific relevance. Diet is only one part of essential nutrient to good health. How much amount to be consumed, is also important regarding functional food? Recently consumer are taking deep interest in functional food containing physiologically/ biologically active components in addition to the nutrients. In this brief review, functionality of functional food according to scientific relevance and recommended intakes has been reviewed.