ABSTRACT
The past decade has seen an increase in consumer awareness to the benefits of healthy eating and, to a certain extent, self-medication through a specific diet, which includes the consumption of nutraceutical/functional foods. An offshoot of this activity has been the growth of numerous business opportunities for the food and pharmaceutical industry sectors. Industry and academia alike have been engaged in both product and process innovation research to yield new functional foods/nutraceuticals to satisfy customers’ needs. The world market for nutraceutical products was estimated to gross an approximate $56 billion in 2001 alone, which represented 37% of the global nutrition industry. Three major markets: U.S. (33.2%), Europe (32.3%), and Japan (25.1%) accounted for over 90% of all functional food sales in 2001. The estimated growths of functional food sales in 2001 and 2002 were 7.3 and 9%, respectively, with growth as large as 35% for products such as fish oil and omega-3 fatty acids in 2002.
