Food ingredients and supplements: is this the future?
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EDITORIAL
Open Access
Food ingredients and supplements: is this the future? Patrizia Riso1* and Laura Soldati2 The concept of adequate nutrition has been changing in the last years in light of the increased knowledge about the relationship between diet and health and the new evidence on the protective role of numerous bioactive compounds introduced with specific categories of foods. In particular, the concept of adequate nutrition has been substituted with that of optimal nutrition, in other terms, attention has been focused on nutritional needs to optimize physiological functions and promote health, minimizing the risk of development of degenerative diseases. Moreover, it is always more clear that nutritional needs can vary depending on the sub-groups of population considered and also on factors related to individual genetic characteristics, as supported by several nutrigenetic and nutrigenomic studies [1]. Parallel to the development of the concept of optimal nutrition for health promotion, the interest for food supplements has been increasing. Supplementation as a general concept is perceived as an easy tool to cover nutritional needs even if there is still an open debate on the reliability and sustainability of this approach. It is clear that a balanced and varied diet provides all the nutrients and non-nutrient compounds necessary for health promotion and disease risk reduction when associated to a healthy life-style. Nevertheless, dietary behavior is often inadequate above all in some groups of the population and rates of obesity and chronic diseases are increasing worldwide. At this regard, it is estimated that non communicable diseases (i.e. heart disease, stroke, chronic respiratory diseases, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, gallbladder disease, certain forms of cancer) that are now the leading cause of death worldwide will still increase by 2020. The WHO’s World Health Report (2002) considered raised blood pressure, raised cholesterol, tobacco use, alcohol consumption, and overweight as the main risk factors * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 DeFENS – Department of Food, Environmental and Nutritional Sciences – Division of Human Nutrition, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
for non communicable diseases and declared that 80% of all the cases of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes and 40% of cancers could be prevented by reducing such risk factors. Obesity is certainly a major contributor to the global burden of non communicable diseases and disability and in the last years we can speak about an obesity pandemic. The simultaneous increases in obesity in almost all countries (both developed and undeveloped countries) has been suggested to be driven mainly by changes in the global food system producing more processed, affordable, and effectively marketed foods [2]. But also there is great attention to the diabetes epidemic. Prevalence of diabetes is different depending on the country with major epicenters in Ame
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