Abstract

STUDY ON CURRENT SCENARIO AND FUTURE OF NUTRACEUTICALS

Shweta Hasmukh Patel*, Shikha Shukla and Dilip Kumar Bharati

ABSTRACT

Nutraceutical is the hybrid of „Nutrition‟ and „Pharmaceutical‟. Nutraceutical, in broad, are food or part of food playing a significant role in modifying and maintaining normal physiological function that maintains healthy human beings. The food products used as nutraceuticals can be categorized as dietary fiber, prebiotics, probiotics, and natural foods. It helps in com- baiting the major health problems such as obesity, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes etc. Nutraceuticals are an emerging class of natural products that makes the line between food and drugs to fade. Nutraceutical studies are now focusing on the examination of foods for their protective and disease preventing potential instead of negative attributes such as microorganism count, adulterants, fatty acids, and inorganic pollutant concentration. The nutraceuticals of both plants and animals‟ origin holds exciting opportunities for the food industries to create novel food products in future Lifestyles of human beings have changed drastically due to psychological pressures, longer work schedules, increasing work, living speed and most importantly the recent change in lifestyle which occurred due to pandemic „‟covid 19”. This has led to an increased demand of nutraceuticals as there was a shift from curative to preventive care, with immunity taking Centre stage due to the onset of pandemic , people are increasingly relying on more nutraceutical products. The aim of this review is to focus on the general concept and the health promoting effects of several nutraceuticals that have the potential of being incorporated Into foods. There is a slight difference between the functional foods and nutraceuticals. When food is being cooked or prepared using “scientific intelligence" with or without knowledge of how or why it is being used, the food is called "functional food. Thus, functional food provides the body with the required amount of vitamin s, fats, proteins, carbohydrates, etc. needed for its healthy survival. When functional food aids in the prevention and/or treatment of disease(s) and/or disorder(s) other than anemia, it is called a nutraceutical.

Keywords: Nutraceutical, Functional food, Cancer, Prevention, Covid 19.