Studies on the Development of Nutraceutical Foods Using Extrusion Technology - A Review

The concept of nutraceutical started from the survey in U.K, Germany and France, but it was originally defined by Dr. Stephen L De Felice. The nutraceutical sector is still more a concept than a reality, but talking about today’s food industry, undoubtedly, nutraceuticals represent one of the fastest growing segments. Ignorance and lack of adequate knowledge about the nutraceutical attributes of such food ingredients have actually kept a wide range of population across the globe devoid of the utilization of these nutraceuticals in basic food materials. Due to this ignorance and wide spread outbreak of several chronic and degenerative diseases, public health authorities do consider firmly that prevention and treatment with these nutraceuticals can be exploited as a powerful tool in ensuring protection against nutritionally induced acute and chronic ill health symptoms. Hence, keeping this in mind, an attempt has been made on the incorporation of these health friendly ingredients into the base materials and subjecting them to extrusion processing technology. Out of a wide range of nutraceuticals from various natural sources, few nutraceuticals selected for the inclusion in extruded products were Gamma oryzanol from rice bran, Beta glucans extracted from barley flour; lignans concentrate from flaxseed and phenolic compound extract from cereal brans. All these selected nutraceuticals are powerful health friendly ingredients serving manifold functional properties and impart immense protection against several degenerative diseases. Incorporation of these nutraceuticals in the extruded products is an authentic and an innovative step towards the development of food products having health and medicinal benefits that can act as a powerful instrument to ensure health and longevity of life.