Challenges in Optimal Utilization of Bioactive Molecules Clinically

Abstract

It is an established fact that the plant-based food is known to provide several health benefits beyond basic nutrition to human. However, with increased demand for food, excessive use of pesticides, chemicals, and hormones to increase the yield and quantity has led to serious issues with use of plant-based diet. Additionally, dependency on few major crops, use of convenient, and ready to eat type of food have also lead to excess of energy and high consumption of carbohydrates which resulted to unexpected increase in incidence of obesity, diabetics, and other metabolic syndromes, globally. In view of such issues with plant-based diet, recently a lot of emphasis is laid to the use of health promoting, low calorie and mixed variety of plant-based diet, and to have more benefits. Traditional indigenous and exotic plants are enriched with beneficial nutrients and are sold in today’s market as functional food or nutraceuticals. Market value for this class of consumer market is close to 200 billion $ and is expected to grow at a rate of 7.5% compound annual growth rate. However, in this journey from food to nutrition and nutraceuticals, some key components have been neglected, which is critical to get optimum benefits. In this chapter, we would like to discuss some of the key challenges in achieving optimum concept of health promoting molecules from farm to fork. Often, we measure the content of these in plant either after harvesting or during storage and based on which we assume the surety of health benefits. Either due to lack of facility or collaborative efforts, we are not considering critical factors like the right time for harvest of commodity, right storage and processing technique, and right cooking and formulation protocol along with selection of right base and ingredients for food. Some of these aspects are discussed in detail along with problems in achieving the same. Additionally, the chapter also provides necessary information on how to test and ascertain the quality of nutrition and its delivery for optimal benefits.