Nutritional Supplements is over a US$80 billion market with an ever increasing demand worldwide.

• In general, people have got awareness that nutritional supplements are now part of their daily life.
• Prevention is better than cure. Instead of getting involved in expensive medications with possible side effects, it is always better to change the life style and prevent from the disease by taking the supplements well in time.
• Academic institutions & laboratories conducting large-scale protocol controlled studies to validate the benefits of nutritional supplements.
• Standardization of therapeutic dosages & forms besides establishment of appropriate indications, enabling doctors to make better use of nutritional supplements.
• Availability of well-documented & published clinical data authenticating efficacy & safety of nutritional supplements.
• Increased preference for nutritional supplements in USA, Canada, European Union, Russia & Japan.
• Research based companies shifted focus to nutritional supplements.
• Growing concern for long-term safety of patients.
• An earlier onset of diseases requiring a longer period of disease management compelling doctors to consider safer options for their patients.
• Focus shifting towards preventive health management.>

Consumers dissatisfied with drug costs and conventional healthcare are turning to proven and tested natural products for treatment and prevention. Consumers were also dissatisfied with non research herbal medicines and it emerged research based, scientifically developed NUTRACEUTICALS.

Nutraceutical is any substance that is a food or a part of a food and provides medical or health benefits, including the prevention and treatment of disease. Such products may range from isolated nutrients, dietary supplements and specific diets to genetically engineered designer foods, herbal products, and processed foods such as cereals, soups and beverages.

Dr Stephen DeFelice coined the term "Nutraceutical" from "Nutrition" and "Pharmaceutical" in 1989. Since the term was coined, its meaning has been modified. Health Canada defines nutraceutical as: 'a product isolated or purified from foods, and generally sold in medicinal forms not usually associated with food and demonstrated to have a physiological benefit or provide protection against chronic disease.'

Nutraceuticals can come from plant, marine, animal, and microbial sources. Specifically, nutraceuticals include whole foods, food additives, herbs, phytonutrients (nutrients found in the skin of many vegetables and fruits, as well as in grains and seeds), probiotics , and vitamin, mineral and herbal supplements.

Speculation on who the winners of the nutraceutical venture will be is becoming a popular topic in papers discussing the pharmaceutical industry. As we know that new medicines are harder to find and more expensive and risky to develop than ever before, many companies.

For example, Du Pont, Abbott Laboratories and Warner Lambert, which have produced conventional pharmaceuticals in the past are now merging to survive, or are turning to nutraceuticals.

This offers them a chance of a very large market. Datamonitor, a website that follows market trends, estimates the nutraceutical market at $17bn, and Dr Felice himself, speaking at a conference in 1998, put the figure at $250bn in America alone. Although these estimates vary widely, the nutraceuticals market is undoubtably very large and growing.

Nutraceuticals and functional foods are food components that provide demonstrated physiological benefits or reduce the risk of chronic disease, above and beyond their basic nutritional functions. A functional food is similar to a conventional food, while a nutraceutical is isolated from a food and sold in dosage form, in both cases the active components occur naturally in the food.