Interest of functional foods for low-income countries

To understand the interest of functional food in low-income countries by analyzing various necessary factors.

Being on a low income would appear to relate most often to an unbalanced diet, both qualitatively and quantitatively, which may be damaging to health in the long term. Most chronic diseases of concern today are multifactorial in origin. For control, an approach in which medicines and nutrition are considered together and complement each other may produce most successful and cost-effective management of health risk factors and chronic diseases. Functional food may become an important player at the interface between pharma and nutrition, and merit attention from both public health and a marketing perspective.

In general, the health benefit of functional food is well established and the attitude both to functional food and to their low socioeconomic consumers is positive.