The way food is perceived in developed countries has
changed in the last 20 years, bringing new life to the
Hippocratic principle Let food be thy medicine and medicine
be thy food and following the tradition in oriental cultures of
attributing curative and ‘therapeutic’ properties to foods.
The upshot has been awareness of the need to use diet as a
means of staying healthy. This tendency has brought with it
the concept of functional foods, in which the stress has
shifted from seeking to ensure food supplies to identifying
the potentialities of foods as promoters of physical and
mental health and seeking to reduce the risk of chronic