ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the existing literature relating to the general availability of marine mollusks, their consumption, pretreatment and manipulating procedures. It also discusses the use of those organisms in the food industry and the contemporary research carried out for the segregation, classification and characterization of bioactive compounds and their efficiency for health promotion by highlighting their therapeutic features. The marine ecosystems have always been Earth’s most precious source of food owing to their great specific diversity. Marine mollusks constitute the most interesting group in this regard since they are among the largest and economically important marine organisms. The evolution of optimized nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals from marine natural products requires advanced extraction and purification procedures in order to intensify the output and the quality of the bioactive components. Conventional liquid solvent extraction systems provoke a number of perturbations for downstream applications.
