Formulation and Evaluation of Functional food Health mixes

Abstract

Over the last few years consumer’s interest in health and functional foods has increased considerably in industrialized countries thus offering an opportunity for agro-food sector to add value to agricultural commodities. Today the world appears to be increasingly interested in the health benefits of foods and have begun to look beyond their basic nutritional benefits to prevention of disease and health enhancement. Traditional systems of medicine owe their significance to the bioactive components that have their origin in plant sources and most of them were associated with routine food habits. Functional food is any fresh or processed food claimed to have a health-promoting or disease preventing property beyond the basic function of supply of nutrients. A functional food is any food or food ingredient that provides health benefit beyond the traditional nutrients it contains. Food supplementation is one of the effective ways of improving the health status of handloom weavers by means of increasing the serum calcium level, regulating the blood glucose and blood pressure. Keeping all these points in mind the investigator selected low cost, locally available ingredients and foods familiar to the community to formulate food supplements to manage diseases like diabetes, hypertension and musculoskeletal disorders. The functional foods are amla, flax seeds, soya, blue berry, carrot, cruciferous vegetables, fish, garlic, whole grams, oats, oranges, spinach etc. The present study was carried out to formulate and preparation of health mixes, assess the nutrient content of health mixes, analysis of anti nutritional factors of health mixes. Overall findings revealed the functional food health mixes are reduced the risk of CVD, Diabetes mellitus, hypertension, cancer and osteoporosis.