Boue Stephen M, Cleveland Thomas E, Carter-Wientjes Carol, Shih Betty Y, Bhatnagar Deepak, McLachlan John M, Burow Matthew E
Southern Regional Research Center, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, New Orleans, Louisiana 70179, USA. sboue@ srrc.ars.usda.gov
J Agric Food Chem. 2009 Apr 8;57(7):2614-22. doi: 10.1021/jf8040403.
Functional foods have been a developing area of food science research for the past decade. Many foods are derived from plants that naturally contain compounds beneficial to human health and can often prevent certain diseases. Plants containing phytochemicals with potent anticancer and antioxidant activities have spurred development of many new functional foods. This has led to the creation of functional foods to target health problems such as obesity and inflammation. More recent research into the use of plant phytoalexins as nutritional components has opened up a new area of food science. Phytoalexins are produced by plants in response to stress, fungal attack, or elicitor treatment and are often antifungal or antibacterial compounds. Although phytoalexins have been investigated for their possible role in plant defense, until recently they have gone unexplored as nutritional components in human foods. These underutilized plant compounds may possess key beneficial properties including antioxidant activity, anti-inflammation activity, cholesterol-lowering ability, and even anticancer activity. For these reasons, phytoalexin-enriched foods would be classified as functional foods. These phytoalexin-enriched functional foods would benefit the consumer by providing "health-enhanced" food choices and would also benefit many underutilized crops that may produce phytoalexins that may not have been considered to be beneficial health-promoting foods.
在过去十年中，功能性食品一直是食品科学研究的一个发展领域。许多食品来源于天然含有对人体健康有益的化合物且通常能预防某些疾病的植物。含有具有强大抗癌和抗氧化活性的植物化学物质的植物推动了许多新型功能性食品的开发。这导致了针对肥胖和炎症等健康问题的功能性食品的产生。最近对将植物抗毒素用作营养成分的研究开辟了食品科学的一个新领域。植物抗毒素是植物在受到胁迫、真菌攻击或诱导剂处理时产生的，通常是抗真菌或抗菌化合物。尽管已经对植物抗毒素在植物防御中的可能作用进行了研究，但直到最近它们作为人类食品中的营养成分尚未得到探索。这些未充分利用的植物化合物可能具有关键的有益特性，包括抗氧化活性、抗炎活性、降低胆固醇的能力，甚至抗癌活性。出于这些原因，富含植物抗毒素的食品将被归类为功能性食品。这些富含植物抗毒素的功能性食品将通过提供“增强健康”的食物选择使消费者受益，也将使许多可能产生植物抗毒素但可能未被视为有益健康促进食品的未充分利用的作物受益。
