Tenth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

Given the scientific, technological, and production advances, nutrition has evolved from an strategy of preventing primary dietary deficiencies - an action associated with a reductionist approach guided by the ambition of understanding the mechanisms responsible for isolated effects of a nutrient at cellular and molecular levels - to a fundamental element in promoting well-being and reducing the risk of diseases. Recently, this approach has been expanded to become more holistic and to better understand nutrition’s role in an even wider context, leading to what is now known as the concept of optimal nutrition (or optimum nutrition). The concept of optimal nutrition comes to be in the new period through the search for maximizing each individual’s physiological functions to ensure overall well-being, full health, and the optimal development of their physical and cognitive potential at the same time that is lowers the risk of diseases to a minimum throughout their lives. And it is precisely on this path to optimal nutrition that the innovative term “functional food” is coined and with it comes the definition of bioactive compounds. This paper aims to discuss key milestones that defined this path - e.g. identification of the connection between chronic diseases and some nutrients, such as calcium, folate, vitamin D, fatty acids, and fibers; improvements in the study and application of bioactive compounds found in food, such as isoflavones, carotenoids, anthocyanins, and catechins, and progress in genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics as well as epigenetics - and the progress throughout the twenty-first century.