Development of Functional Dairy Foods

Abstract

There has been a growing interest on functional foods, markedly recognized as being able to provide additional benefits on health promotion, wellbeing maintenance, and disease prevention. Based on this scenario, food industries have been increasingly focused in developing added-value foodstuffs, being dairy foods one of the most currently used food products for functional purposes. Different extraction and encapsulation technologies have been used to obtain target food bioactive ingredients and to ensure an effective functionalization of dairy products, respectively. Probiotics, prebiotics, mushrooms, and plant food bioactive extracts comprise the most commonly used food ingredients to produce functional dairy foods, mostly fermented milk, yogurt, and cheese. In fact, dynamic and promissory biological effects have been documented for these functional dairy foods, among them antioxidant, cardioprotective, antihypertensive, immunomodulatory, antimicrobial, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, neuromodulatory, and even bone protection. However, besides the impact of health benefits on consumers’ acceptance and subsequent consumption of functional dairy foods, other factors, such as consumers’ familiarity with new products and functional ingredients used on their formulation, consumers’ knowledge and awareness about the credibility of shared health effects, and finally the organoleptic and sensory evaluation of the developed functional dairy foods, have also a determinant role. Anyway, consumers are considered self-contributors for this promising food innovation. Thus, the concept of functional dairy foods may represent an upcoming multiniche market and sustainable trend to be exploited.