An Overview on the Functional Food Concept: Prospectives and Applied Researches in Probiotics, Prebiotics and Synbiotics

The principal role of diet is to supply adequate nutrients providing energy to sustain physiologic functions and well-being. Every foods and feeds are functional and consumption of bioactive molecules is facilitated by diet. All probiotics, prebiotics and synbiotics are functional components able to exercise significant influences on human and animal wellbeing. Emphasizing these positive activities is one possible approach for improving the health image of meat and plants and developing functional products. Discovering of new prebiotic/probiotic/synbiotic functional foods is linked to the interest of the food industry to renew constantly through introduction of products with enhanced nutritional value, but also with health advantage for consumers. This review provides potential benefits of representative bioactive compounds on human and animal health and an overview of meat and plant-based functional products. Besides the increase of scientific reports, there is a necessary need to update consumers of the feeding value of novel functional foods. Vincenzo Tufarelli* and Vito Laudadio