Nano-based Nutraceuticals and their Applications: Food Safety, Regulation and Challenges

The growth of functional foods has gotten a lot of attention as people become more aware of the relationship between nutrition and human health. Several problems are identified, including discovering beneficial phytochemicals, establishing acceptable consumption levels, and producing suitable food delivery matrices and product compositions. Many nanotechnology-derived processes and materials have the potential to provide innovative solutions in many of those foreparts. Nanotechnology works with materials on the atomic and molecular levels to create structures smaller than 100 nanometers in one dimension. Food nanotechnology could be a comparatively recent area that has opened up an entire world of new applications in the food industry. The applications comprise better taste, color, flavor, texture, and consistency of foodstuffs, the bioavailability of nutraceuticals, increased absorption and health supplements, food antimicrobial developments, food packaging materials with better quality, mechanical barrier, and antimicrobial properties, nano-sensors for traceability and observing the condition of food during transport and storage, encapsulation of food constituents or additives. This chapter briefly reviews the role of nanotechnology in functional foods and its applications, and food safety, regulation, and challenges are discussed.

Keywords: Food nanotechnology, Food supplements, Food applications, Nutraceuticals, Safety regulations.