ABSTRACT
Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician considered by some to be the father of modern medicine, has often been quoted as saying: “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food” [1]. Furthermore, in a wide variety of human cultures, there is a tradition of using foods for their healing properties; an obvious case is the long history of Chinese herbal medicine [2]. These two examples demonstrate that for a signicant proportion of recorded human history, it has been acknowledged that food, in addition to its obvious role as a source of macronutrients, may have properties that make it benecial to human health in ways that go “beyond nutrition.” The term “functional foods” has relatively recently been applied to this very old concept
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 243 Epigenetics .............................................................................................................244
