[The Potential Analysis of Flavoring Agents as Novel Functional Foods]

Functional foods have attracted increasing attention. To prevent diseases using functional foods, various unhealthy conditions must be addressed, such as blood lipids, blood sugar, and blood pressure. However, there are insufficient functional ingredients available to address these unhealthy conditions. For example, five main ingredients (such as γ-aminobutyric acid) currently predominate in foods with functional claims, and account for approximately 38.2% of the total registered products in Japan. These data suggest that some functional and safe ingredients are widely used. From this perspective, enhancing the lineup of functional ingredients is necessary to address unhealthy conditions and develop various functional foods in the future. Flavoring agents are attractive ingredients. However, studies on flavoring agents have focused only on psychological functions, such as relaxation. In this study, we discuss the potential use of flavoring agents as functional ingredients.