Looking back at the achievements of functional food science in Japan

Functional food science in Japan actively began approximately 40 years ago in the form of specific research projects funded by Grants-in-Aids for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. Then, a new category of healthy food, that is "Food for Specified Health Use" (FOSHU), was established. Toshihiko Osawa organized and held the First International Conference on Food Factors in Hamamatsu, Japan, in 1995. As examples of key achievements in basic science, the chemical identification of numerous active principles in foods, elucidation of their metabolism pathways, and mechanistic findings using "omics" technologies and the discovery of target molecules are remarkable. However, whether FOSHU truly contributes to public health is still unknown. In this minireview, the author looks back on functional food science in Japan to date and, at the same time, describes the prospects to share a vision of the future in the next 10 years.