Nutraceuticals: Let Food be your Medicine.

With the evolution in science and technology followed by the changing lifestyle of individuals the demand for products possessing some medicinal and nutritional value has also been increased. The involvement of nutrients in the form of medicines in the human diet has shown promising results and attracted the attention of scientists globally. A nutraceutical can be defined as a food or its part that has the potential of providing certain health-related or medical benefits including avoidance of disease. The discovery and history have investigated several aspects of noticeably profound medicinal values of such products. Such products range from dietary supplements, nutritional supplements and herbals to fortified and recombinant nutraceuticals. As per the estimate of WHO, near about 80% of the global population currently uses herbal medicines for some aspect of primary health care. These are the alternative to modern medicines and also provide healthy living. Studies have revealed the promising results for these compounds in various compilations hence, the present review deals with the definition, history, classification and certain health related benefits of different nutraceutical compounds