Precise Nutrition and Functional Foods

The different views and tensions between foods for growth of the body and foods for health and disease prevention can be seen since philosophers of the antique and middle ages. The efforts to develop foods for the improvement of health for persons at risk, e.g., elderly have resulted in exciting scientific and medical innovations. But developments also resulted in legal- and trading problems between different regions of the world. Also quite different expectations of different groups of consumers in their food developed, with relevance to their regional and social background. The scientific progress to understand the connections between genetics, epigenetics, microbiota, and metabolomics as well as considerably individual metabolic differences resulted in the increasing acceptance of personal different needs of individuals in their foods. Consequently, foods and diets with different functions have been developed and need to be approved for effectivity, bioavailability, stability, and safety.