ABSTRACT
Food and health surveys of consumer attitudes toward functional foods conducted by the International Food Information Council reveal that today’s consumers are primed for information about food that provides benefits beyond basic nutrition and how to incorporate these foods into their diets (IFICF 2007). It also implies a consumer willingness to make changes in order to improve the healthfulness of their diets in an effort to reduce risk of disease. The surveys also suggest that heart disease, weight maintenance, and cancer are the top health concerns of Americans and populations of other Western (or developed) countries. Functional foods, include a wide variety of foods and food components that are believed to improve overall health and well-being, reduce the risk of specific diseases, or minimize the effects of other health concerns (Anderson and Milner 2005). For example, the American Dietetic Association recommends that the public should consume adequate amounts of dietary fiber from a variety of plant foods because populations that consume more dietary fiber have less chronic disease and better heath. In addition, intake of dietary fiber has beneficial effects on risk factors for developing several chronic diseases (Slavin 2008). Therefore, dietary fiber is a good example of a functional food component.
