Nutrient Delivery Review

Nutrient delivery review

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The main subject in this chapter written by Giuliana Vozza et al is to present the importance of nanotechnology delivery system to functional foods (nutraceutical). The main goal of a diet is to deliver proper nutrients to a specific nutritional requirement and this chapter explains the relevance of nutraceuticals, if a food does not provide any health benefit beyond rudimentary nutrition, this food is considered as a food ingredient, on the other hand, if a food or substance provides beneficial effects to our health beyond rudimentary nutrition and this fact is supported by the scientific area, this substance is classified as nutraceutical. This research work discuss how nanotechnology delivery system may enhance the delivery of nutrients to our bodies improving health and consequently quality of life to humans and other beings.

Looking at the chapter structure, this paper has a good format with an introduction explaining and giving an overview about functional foods, in an general way, and how nanotechnology may improve the delivery of nutraceuticals and how industries are interested in this new area of research. We can observe the presence of images, diagrams and tables during the whole chapter, also a good thing to facilitate the reader’s understanding. As cited above, this work has an introduction briefing the essential informantion and the chapter is divided into 14 topics, each one of them discuss an particular area of nutraceutical delivery such as Nutraceutical Formulation Challenges, where the paper assess the challenges of the effectiveness of a nutraceutical once there are many variables that can compromise bioavailability and consequently absorption. In other topic, the author discuss about the hurdles faced in oral delivery since oral delivery is the most usual route and have more acceptance among patients, however, some substances such as bioactive peptides, minerals, and vitamins must overcome obstacles because oral administration of peptide, minerals, and vitamins drugs is limited mainly by the intense enzymatic degradation in the gastrointestinal tract and low permeability across the intestinal mucosa, each one of them can affect the potential effectiveness of nutraceutical compounds. There is an concise and simple conclusion, clarifying the main concerns approached in the chapter and the expectations for the future in research and industry area.

Everyone, in the scientific area, knows that is essential to mention methodology data and metion other important papers in the area to add value to the work. In the whole chapter is possible to see citations, even in the tables. The author mention many different papers and researches giving methodological and experimental data as we can see in the following table taken from the chapter (topic 5 - Bioavailability Enhancement With Nanoparticles):