Although common place in today’s medical circles, Dr Stephen DeFelice’s new term “nutraceutical sciences” wasn’t invented until the 1990’s.
The word is actually a culmination of two words “nutrition” and “pharmaceutical”, when combined they make nutraceutical.
The definition of nutraceutical is that it is a food or food extract that can provide health or medical benefit, including treatment or prevention of illness or disease.
Finding medicinal uses from every day foods like certain vegetables is becoming more popular and nutraceutical sciences are playing a key part in identifying new uses and treatments.
Deciding if a food can be considered depends on factors such as the nutritional content and other areas studied through nutraceutical sciences.
Nutraceutical products are regulated and defined in many ways, for example the US and Canada define them differently.
Examples of products developed through Nutraceutical Sciences
There is an ever growing number of products that have been identified by nutraceutical sciences, the most common ones are:
Broccoli – A popular vegetable and highlighted as an anti-carcinogen.
Red Grape – Many common household drinks including fruit juice, wine and even some teas contain red grape, which is a good antioxidant.
Chia Seed> – Seeds often have good nutritional content and the chia seed can help lower cardiovascular disease as its high in alpha-linolenic acid.
Regulation of Nutraceutical Sciences and products
Due to the wide availability of nutraceuticals governing them is difficult and they are widely placed in the same category as “dietary supplements”.
There isn’t currently a set of global regulations covering nutraceutical sciences.
In 2005 the Federal Food and Drug administration where aided by a blue-ribbon committee being established to help regulate nutraceutical sciences.
Nutraceutical sciences are providing us with alternatives to traditional medicines, however it’s important that these new medicines are governed to ensure health and safety.
However it’s fantastic to see new medicinal products coming to the market that have the ability to fight life threatening diseases such as cancer.