What is beneficial for health? The concept of functional food

'Functional Food' is now a very popular term. The conceptual approach developed in the EU-founded FUFOSE (Functional Food Science in Europe) project is rather restrictive, making functional food a food product to be part of the usual dietary pattern. Functional food science that supports the development of functional foods is and must remain part of the science of nutrition. Finally, all that exercise, that extended over the last 3 years, was function-driven because the functions and their modulation are universal, as opposed to a food or food component-driven approach, which is likely to be very much influenced by local, traditional or cultural characteristics. (C) 1999 Elsevier, Science Ltd. All rights reserved.