Our daily diet consists of a variety of food stuff in a balanced proportion to provide the necessary nutritional value for all bodily activities. At times, the basic nutrients are not considered sufficient and additional improvements in the daily diet needs to be done to maintain human health keeping in mind the needs of the person. Thus, with growing technologies several group of food products are being recognized to tackle the wide-ranging prospects of consumer health and preferences.
Functional foods and smart protein are such group of food products that are being developed to solve some of the present issues. Functional foods are the food products which apart from their basic nutritional value provide additional health benefits to the consumer. Smart protein are the protein rich food products that have the potential to replace the conventional sources of protein.

Functional foods are considered responsible to foster needs such as dealing with deficiency diseases, improving health and hence complete the targeted nutritional requirement of a person. They may be either natural or modified. Natural functional foods include items such as fruits (e.g. kiwi), vegetables (e.g. spinach), nuts (e.g. almond), which are utilized due to their nutrient richness, presence of antioxidants and other factors that make them special in this respect. Modified functional foods is another group in which some food products are purposely modified by adding or enriching, removing or extracting some of the components to improve their nutritive quality as per the requirement. This process is also known as fortification and the nutrient being added is called fortificant. Fortification is done on the basis of the requirements of the target population that is, the age, gender, metabolic conditions, etc. Iodized salt, milk enriched with vitamin D, juices enriched with vitamin C, etc. are the various examples of fortified food products.
Smart protein, also known as alternate protein, are food products that are high in protein and have the potential to replace animal-based protein, dairy, etc. Smart protein food products may be of the following types- Plant based protein, fermentation derived proteins and the food products obtained from cell culture techniques. Such kind of product may help the consumers to maintain their daily protein requirement without having to worry about the specific day of the week or other factors involving socio-religious sentiments of the people. Development of protein rich food products through cell culture is an excellent technique at quite low cost due to the requirement of cheap and easily available raw material. The India Smart Protein Innovation Challenge 2023 is an initiative that aims for growth and development in this area.

Thus, research and developments in the categories of functional food and smart protein have enabled better nutrition and multiple options for the consumers to choose according to their convenience and bodily requirements. Focusing on the need to feed the ever-increasing population and treat deficiencies there is great possibility in this field.

Shivani Kumari

University/College name : Banaras Hindu University