by Gomez Gomez

Created on: July 13, 2007   Last Updated: July 14, 2007

Functional foods, foods that have some kind of nutritional benefit beyond that which they have naturally, have an important role to play in both developed and developing nations. The main roles of functional foods in developed nations seem to be remedy the poor diet and unhealthy lifestyle of their inhabitants, to delay the onset of symptoms of aging, to improve the appearance of their citizens, and to ease the burden on their public healthcare systems. There are a nmber of problems, however, that would accompany the widespread distribution of functional foods in these countries. It is therefore important that their governments regulate and monitor functional foods, in order to ensure that they do not negatively affect their societies. Functional food could be enormously beneficial to developing nations, in that they could allow vast quantities of their populations, a large proportion of whom are currently malnourished, to have an adequate daily nutrient intake. Although the potential benefits of functional foods to the third world are greater than those to more developed areas so too are the drawbacks. Consequentially, it behoves their governments too to put stringent regulations in place to guarantee that the functional foods only affect their countries positively.

Functional foods could potentially have an important role to play in developed countries. In these comparably advanced nations, obesity, a poor diet, and a grave lack of physical activity are having an increasingly severe impact on public health. Supplementing people's flawed nutritional regimes with functional foods and introducing foods for appetite control, upon which the Australian National Centre of Excellence in Functional Foods (NCEFF) is currently focused on developing, could go a long way towards reversing this trend. Foods for healthy aging is another high priority for the NCEFF, the main concerns of which are presumably reflected throughout the developed world. As more and more people reach old age they are becoming increasingly concerned with the various maladies that come with aging, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertensions, and reduced mental capacities. Functional foods, such as breads enriched with omega-3, could help with this. Additionally, in developed nations, there seems to be a growing trend towards products that have cosmetic rather than health benefits. Japan's Eiwa Confectionary, for example, is exporting marshmallows containing collagen,

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