ABSTRACT
The relationship of food with health maintenance and disease prevention has been well known since ancient times. However, the increasing acceptance of the connection between diet and health presents new opportunities and perspectives of food ingredients over physiological and metabolic functions and health and disease process in consumers. Non-communicable diseases (NCD) are responsible for 38 million deaths each year, approximately 28 million occur in low and middle-income countries. Cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes are the NCD that most death causes (17.5, 8.2, and 1.5 million people, respectively). Among the risk factors associated with NCD, the most important ones are smoking, physical inactivity, harmful consumption of alcohol and unhealthy diets. In recent years functional foods have been used to treat different illnesses, including NCD. Functional foods are expressly made to improve health in patients besides of the nutritive function in the organism. In the present chapter, the most relevant studies on functional foods in NCDs, their health-disease relationship, their components, improvements, uses and advantages are discussed.
