ABSTRACT
For thousands of years, humans have continued to undertake strenuous exploration on how to utilize natural resources better. Even in early civilization, humans realized that ingestion of certain foods or herbals could make their body better by being free from diseases or recovering from diseases faster. This practice lasted for thousands of years, although the specic phytochemical ingredients responsible for the observed benecial effects were largely unknown. The advent of modern chemistry, biology, and medicine made it possible to identify some of the chemical ingredients responsible for the benecial effects. Today, natural compounds and their derivatives represent a large section of approved drugs. We are experiencing an increasing benecial effect from using these health-promoting and disease-preventing phytochemicals (Chin et al. 2006).
