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Functional Foods, Nutraceuticals and Dietary Supplements in Cancer Prevention

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Dietary Research and Cancer

Abstract

Functional foods comprise foods or food components that have potential to provide health benefits beyond basic requirements of nutrition. It is believed that functional foods are value-added products, which not only provide nutrients but also help to maintain good health and reduce the risk of diseases including cancer. “Nutraceuticals” is a combination of two words “nutrition” and “pharmaceutical”, which have demonstrated positive effects on overall health well-being, and also complements for prevention and treatment of diseases including cancer.

Dietary supplements (DSs) are developed to provide micronutrients that otherwise are not consumed in sufficient quantities from the dietary sources. The DSs include micronutrients such as vitamins, minerals, proteins, amino acids or other nutritional botanicals. These products are usually available in the market in the form of tablet, capsule and liquid formulations. The cancer survivors use variety of functional foods, nutraceuticals and DSs with an intension of cancer prevention, maintaining good quality of life and for overall survival. All these three forms of health-promoting agents have demonstrated efficacy in the treatment of different types of cancer. In the present state of the art, the convincing clinical evidence describing the effective role of these complementary and alternative therapeutic approaches is lacking, which warrants the design and conduct of human clinical trials. Nevertheless, the available literature is controversial towards the cancer therapeutic claims. Of note, their nonjudicious consumption has been correlated with variety of cancer-related health adversities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tumor Biology Laboratory, Department of Biotechnology, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, Maharashtra, India

    Rajesh N. Gacche

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Gacche, R.N. (2021). Functional Foods, Nutraceuticals and Dietary Supplements in Cancer Prevention. In: Dietary Research and Cancer . Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6050-4_12

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