Obesity and Diet Imbalance

In the last decades, consumer demand for functional food is growing. Consumers want not only food to satisfy their sense of hunger or sensorial pleasure, but also food that will provide them with nutrients that help improve health or prevent certain diseases. Functional foods are products that contain various biologically active compounds and which, consumed in a current diet, contribute to maintaining the optimal state of physical and mental health of the humankind. Functional foods contain a number of functional ingredients such as fibers, oligosaccharides, polyalcohols, peptides and proteins, prebiotics and probiotics, phytochemicals and antioxidants, polyunsaturated fatty acids, etc. Cereals are one of the world's main food sources. Wheat is the major cereal consumed around the world, but once refined, its nutritional qualities are decreasing. Based on these considerations, the interest in whole grains and less widely used cereals, as feedstocks for functional foods, has increased. World Health Organization reports confirm the benefits of whole grain cereal consumption as reducing the risk of non-communicable diseases (eg type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and obesity). New trends suggest strategies and processing technologies to improve the content and bioavailability of nutrients and bioactive compounds in cereal foods. Our suggestions come with suggestions for using functional foods using cereals such as rye, oats, buckwheat, quinoa with protein additions.