Functional Foods Based on Traditional Chinese Medicine

The primary role of foods is to satisfy hunger and provide people with necessary nutrients, while today more and more foods or phytochemical compounds from edible plants are used to prevent nutrition-related diseases and to increase physical and mental well-being of people. These products are called functional foods, which were introduced first in Japan in the early 1980s. In the last decades, functional food industries have been developed rapidly, and functional foods have been accepted in many countries by the public due to the demand for healthier foods and products. However, there is no clear definition regarding functional foods so far at global level (Menrad, 2003; Kaushik and Kaushik, 2010). Different countries have a different regulatory framework for functional foods. The modern concept of functional food was proposed first by the Japanese academic society in the early 1980s. The legislation for functional foods was first implemented as “Foods for Special Health Use (FOSHU)” in 1991 (Arai et al., 2001). According to FOSHU, functional foods refer to natural or formulated foods containing ingredients that aid specific body functions in addition to being nutritious. Functional foods consist of foodand drink-based formulations. This first legislation highlighted the functional food as a food which should be consumed as part of the daily diet (not a capsule, tablet, or powder). A working definition of functional foods has been developed by Functional Food Science in Europe (FUFOSE) in the 1990s, stating that this is a food item that beneficially affects one or more target functions in the body beyond adequate nutritional effects in a way that is relevant to either an improved state of health and well being and /or reduction of risk of disease. The American Dietetic Association (ADA, 1999) described functional foods as any potentially healthful food or food ingredient that may provide a health benefit beyond the traditional nutrients that it contains. This is a simple definition for spanning the vast topic of food and health. The International Food Information Council (IFIC, 1998) defines functional foods as foods that provide health benefits beyond basic nutrition. Generally, functional foods may be classified as conventional food, probiotics and nutraceuticals. Conventional food includes whole foods with functional effects at some physiological level, for example, nuts and tomatoes (Kaushik