Enhancing the business potential of functional foods through traditional gastronomy

Abstract

Food companies have high expectations of the key role played by the functional foods in helping consumers to have a healthy lifestyle. This study explores experts' vision and knowledge and also consumers' acceptance of the health claims, attitudes and receptivity of a series of functional concepts that proved to have a high business potential in Romania. This paper concludes that food companies should drive consumption by designing functional foods close to traditional recipes in order to gain both emotional (familiarity and heritage) and functional (health reward, technological risk acceptance) character. Re-designing the traditional food by adding bio- Active ingredients could become a key field in the agri-food business, able to build long term solutions to the actual agro- Alimentary global challenges.