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The nutraceuticals market comprises two principal segments: functional foods and dietary supplements. Products include isolated nutrients, dietary supplements, and processed foods and beverages such as cereals, soups, soyfood, and fortified juices.
Functional foods are similar in appearance to a conventional food or beverage, are consumed as part of a normal diet, and have been demonstrated to have physiological benefits or to reduce the risk of chronic diseases beyond basic nutritional functions. Functional foods can also promote growth and development and enhance performance, and can take many forms. Some may be conventional foods with bioactive components that can now be identified and linked to positive health outcomes (e.g., soy protein, oat fiber, cranberries, tomatoes and carrot juice). Some may be fortified to enhance foods or specifically created to reduce disease risk (e.g., vitamin- and mineral-fortified cereal, folate-fortified flour and grain products, calcium-enriched orange juice or milk, phytosterol-fortified spreads and yogurt with living bacteria culture).
Dietary supplements are foodstuffs whose purpose is to supplement the normal diet and that are concentrated sources of nutrients or other substances with a nutritional or physiological effect, alone or in combination, marketed in pharmaceutical dose form and administered orally. Dose forms include capsules, pastilles, tablets, pills and other similar forms, sachets of powder, ampoules of liquids, drop dispensing bottles, and other similar forms of liquids and powders designed to be taken in measured small unit quantities. Dietary supplements include all products that can be purchased by the consumer without a prescription. However, herbal supplements and sport nutrition products often included in this category are not discussed in this report.
Nutraceuticals are currently classified as foods and not drugs. Therefore any medical claim of prevention, treatment or cure of disease cannot be made for nutraceutical products. However, both dietary supplements and functional foods are permitted to make certain health claims.
Nutraceutical ingredients are found as components of foods or in other ingestible forms that have been determined to be beneficial to the human body in preventing or treating one or more diseases or improving physiological performance. Nutraceutical ingredients are components of plants, animals, or microorganisms and also include synthetic variants of natural nutraceuticals sold in the form of pills, capsules or powders, or in other medicinal forms not usually associated with food. A nutraceutical ingredient is demonstrated to have a physiological benefit or to provide protection against chronic disease. Essential nutrients can be considered nutraceuticals if they provide benefit beyond their essential role in normal growth or maintenance of the human body. Examples are the antioxidant properties of vitamins C and E. On the other hand, the definition excludes complete extracts of herbs.
Nine major segments of nutraceutical ingredients are included in this report. Consumption of each major nutraceutical ingredient segment for 2007 and forecast growth to 2012 are discussed in detail for the United States, Europe, Japan and China.
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