点击显示 收起
Functional Foods for Health Program, 1302 West Pennsylvania Avenue, Room 105, Agricultural Bioprocess Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801. E-mail: c-hasler{at}uiuc.edu.
The topic of nutraceuticals is one of the hottest issues in the field of nutrition and food sciences today. Because of the convergence of many key factors—including an aging, health-conscious population; changes in food regulations (eg, health and structural and functional claims); numerous technologic advances (eg, nutritional genomics); and a marketplace ripe for the introduction of health-promoting products—the topic of nutraceuticals has successfully made the transition from the domain of "snake oil science" to a mainstream area of research, education, and product development. Although there is still international debate on how nutraceuticals should be defined, the following was proposed by Zeisel (1) in 1999: "...diet supplements that deliver a concentrated form of a presumed bioactive agent from a food, presented in a nonfood matrix, and used to enhance health in doses that exceed those that could be obtained from normal food." This isolated component concept of nutraceuticals clearly distinguishes them from functional foods, defined by the American Dietetic Association as (2) "...whole, fortified, enriched or enhanced foods which have a potentially beneficial effect on health when consumed as part of a varied diet on a regular basis at effective levels."
Many books have been published on the topic of nutraceuticals and functional foods over the past 8 y. However, this latest compilation edited by Rapport and Lockwood is unique in that, in addition to addressing 3 nutraceuticals (lycopene, proanthocyanidins and grape products, and flaxseed and flaxseed oil) covered in several previously written works, it discusses 5 physiologically active compounds not previously addressed: glucosamine, octacosanol, carnitine, melatonin, and ornithine ketoglutarate. Thus, Nutraceuticals aims to fill an existing gap on the subject of complementary medicines of natural origin that are not herbal remedies.
What I particularly liked about this brief but well-written text is that, in addition to critically reviewing the purported role of each bioactive component in disease risk reduction or health enhancement (and the optimal dose thought to achieve this), Nutraceuticals also discusses potential side effects, contraindications for use, and quality-control issues. In some cases, particularly with the more novel compounds, human clinical trials are sorely lacking or have serious design flaws. The need for sound science in this rapidly growing field is repeatedly emphasized throughout the text.
Overall, I believe that Nutraceuticals is an excellent complement to the growing number of specialized texts now available on the topic and will be a useful reference for nutrition researchers, dietitians, pharmacists, physicians, and other health professionals.
REFERENCES