Plant sterols in functional foods.

The terms nutraceutical and functional food are often used interchangeably, with the latter currently being the more popular term. In 1989, Dr. Stephen L. DeFelice of the Foundation for Innovation in Medicine coined the term nutraceutical and defined it as ‘‘any substance that is a food or part of a food that provides medical and/or health benefits, including the prevention and treatment of disease’’ (1). According to DeFelice, nutraceuticals include foods, dietary supplements, and medical foods. According to the Nutraceuticals Institute (Rutgers and St. Joseph Universities), ‘‘nutraceuticals (often referred to as phytochemicals or functional foods) are natural bioactive chemical compounds that have health promoting, disease preventing, and medicinal properties’’ (2). The Merriam– Webster Dictionary defines nutraceutical as ‘‘a foodstuff (as a fortified food or dietary supplement) that provides health benefits.’’ The concepts that led to the field of functional foods were developed in Japan in the 1980s (3). The term physiological functional food first appeared in a 1993 Nature article entitled ‘‘Japan Explores the Boundary Between Food and Medicine’’ (4). A 1994 definition of functional foods, from the Washington, D.C.– based National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, is ‘‘any food or