Functional Food

Functional food is a food where a new ingredient(s) (or more of an existing ingredient) has been added to a food and the new product has an additional function (often one related to health-promotion or disease prevention).

The general category of functional foods includes processed food or foods fortified with health-promoting additives, like "vitamin-enriched" products. Products considered functional generally do not include products where fortification has been done to meet government regulations and the change is not recorded on the label as a significant addition ("invisible fortification"). An example of this type of fortification would be the historic addition of iodine to table salt, or Vitamin D to milk, done to resolve public health problems such as rickets. Fermented foods with live cultures are considered functional foods with probiotic benefits.

Functional foods are part of the continuum of products that individuals may consume to increase their health and/or contribute to reducing their disease burden.

"Functional Food is a Natural or processed food that contains known biologically-active compounds which when in defined quantitative and qualitative amounts provides a clinically proven and documented health benefit, and thus, an important source in the prevention, management and treatment of chronic diseases of the modern age". It was debated at the 9th International Conference on "Functional Foods and Chronic Diseases: Science and Practice" at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on March 15-17, 2011.Functional Food Center has adopted a new definition of functional food

Functional foods are an emerging field in food science due to their increasing popularity with health-conscious consumers and the ability of marketers to create new interest in existing products.

The term was first used in Japan in the 1980s where there is a government approval process for functional foods called Foods for Specified Health Use (FOSHU).