4 Challenges in incorporating nutraceuticals into functional foods.

RAM CHAUDHARI. Fortitech, Inc.

Vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fibers and botanicals are widely used in food industries for fortification of cereals, preserves, baked foods, beverages, infant formulae, baby foods and nutritional bars. When these nutraceuticals are incorporated into such foods, they undergo various types of processing conditions, such as extrusion, spray drying, mixing, homogenization, pasteurization, UHT and HTST. Some of the vitamins are not stable under such processing conditions and lose their potency while some of the minerals interact with other ingredients present in these foods which may result in undesired flavor, texture, taste and color changes. Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in fortifying foods with different kinds of botanicals. In the past few years, there has been some development to ensure “good” quality of these botanicals. However, due to limited knowledge about their “active” components, required daily dosage levels, structure-function relationship and limited availability of standardized analytical markers with high purity, it has made it difficult to monitor the quality of these botanicals. As a result, fortification of foods with such botanicals poses many different kinds of challenges. Main focus will be to address the challenges faced while incorporating such nutraceuticals into functional foods and possible ways to overcome them.