Functional Foods & Nutraceuticals
"Nutraceuticals" and "functional foods" are two new terms used to describe health-promoting foods or their extracted components.
Nutraceuticals are healthful products that are formulated and taken in dosage form (capsules, tinctures, or tablets).
Functional foods are products that are consumed as foods and not in dosage form.
Nutraceutical can be defined as, "a food (or part of a food) that provides medical or health benefits, including the prevention and/or treatment of a disease."
Functional foods are foods/food materials that provide the body with the required amount of vitamins, 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 nutraceuticals.
Nutraceuticals is a product isolated or purified from foods that is generally sold in medicinal forms not usually associated with foods. When a nutraceuticals is demonstrated to have a physiological benefit or provide protection against chronic disease, the functional foods are defined broadly as foods that provide more than simple nutrition; they supply additional physiological benefit to the consumer.
Research & Development in Functional Foods & Nutraceuticals
Clean Green Bio-Research Foundation (CGBRF) involves in research that are directed towards value-added functional foods and nutraceuticals which offer health promotion, performance enhancement, as well as disease prevention and management.
The CGBRF’s aim to determine structure, function, efficacy, and safety of functional foods and nutraceuticals as well as evaluate products in controlled animal studies for potential health claims and consumers acceptability. We have associations with various national and international research institutes to undertake speciality evaluations and clinical studies.
The CGBRF possesses research expertise and equipments directed to:
- Identify potential functional ingredients that could provide benefits in terms of health and well-being
- Establish Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) for a wider range of nutrients to enable commercial exploitation of more functional components
- Identify individual biological responses to functional foods
- Define the bioavailability of functional food ingredients & safety at efficacious levels
- Potential functional ingredient extraction, product formulation and scientific sufficiency of evidence for efficacy
- Anticipate demand for personalised nutrition and the potential role of functional foods
- Develop appropriate biomarkers for a wider range of functional endpoints
- Develop the potential utility of nutrigenomics, bioinformatics, proteomics, metabolomics and Nanotechnology in the development of functional foods
- Ensure stability of functional food ingredients during manufacturing and passage through the GI tract to reach the target organ intact.
- Develop novel drug delivery systems for nutraceuticals and the interactions of these delivery systems with biological systems are investigated at the (sub) cellular, tissue and organism level, both in vitro and in vivo. Eg: pheroid technology, encapsulation (micro,nano) techniques, etc.,
- Conduct in-market confirmation of efficacy and safety
- Product and market valuation and development, business planning and supply chain optimization
The experience and credibility of employees in tandem with a fully equipped facility make it possible to define the health claim for each functional food or nutraceutical developed through the CGBRF with an ‘enhanced function claim’ and / or a ‘disease reduction claim,’ which is critically important for the reputation of your company and ultimately consumer acceptance of your product.
Consumer driven product development:
- Selection of health benefits
- Selection of carrier/ingredient combinations
- Framing of health related messages
- Cultural differences
- Consumer segments
- Right technology
- Health branding approach