Functional Food Security and the Heart

Abstract

Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http: //creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ABSTRACT Increased demand for food security has made the world blind about the utility and necessity of functional food security characterized with food diversity and adequacy of nutrients. Food diversity may have been the major factor causing adequacy of nutrients in the Paleolithic diet 40,000 years ago. The increased prevalence of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and type 2 diabetes throughout the world, are closely linked to food security via westernized dietary patterns, physical inactivity, and rapid increase in the rate of obesity. The World Heart Federation and the World Health Organization are working hard to bring down the death rates due to CVDs, at least 25% by 2025.There is substantial evidence that increased intake of functional foods can bring about a significant decline in the epidemic of CVDs and type 2 diabetes, resulting in health promotion. It is possible that functional food security in conjunction with regular physical activity, can maintain the normal physiology and metabolism of our bodies, resulting into decline in CVDs and type 2 diabetes.