Functional foods, designer foods, nutraceuticals, alicamentos, medicalimento or pharmaceuticals are some of the terms used to give names to the products that, in addition to providing nutrients, improve health or prevent a chronic or degenerative disease of high prevalence.
In some cases, as in the case of foods low in cholesterol, fats, sugars or salt , the method consists of eliminating a component that consumed in excess can have adverse effects. Other times the solution is to add a nutrient that has been identified as essential in a balanced diet – vitamin A, vitamin D, calcium, fiber, iron, … -. And, increasingly, the food transformation process involves incorporating substances with healing properties or with a biological activity related to health , such as the popular omega-3 fatty acid, bifidobacteria or folic acid.
