**3. Application of sustainable healthy ingredients in functional foods**

The recent tendency of functional food development had determined the orientation of the scientific community to attractive sustainable and healthy ingredients which can be used in the production. This demarche aims to valorize some of the


**Table 3.**

*Applications of different types of sustainable ingredients.*

**Figure 3.** *Application of sustainable healthy ingredients in functional foods.*

most important characteristics of sustainable and healthy ingredients such as easily digestible protein, healthy fat, and repertoire of various essential micronutrients for billions across the globe. In recent years, these ingredients were used in the different sector of the food industry being incorporated in various food products to obtain fortified functional foods (**Figure 3**) such as bakery and meat products, food supplements, pharmaceutical products, food additives, cosmetic products.

According to the data presented in **Table 3**, the benefits of sustainable and healthy ingredient are well known but their application in the elaboration of food products is quite recent mainly as meat, fat, phosphates, salt, flour, and nitrite replacer. As a result, many research teams are focusing on the assessment of efficient incorporation of the bioactivities of sustainable and healthy ingredients into newly developed food products. Despite the progress made there are several issues that need to be solved in the future such as the demonstration of the correlation between the functional activities and mechanisms, as well as their safety evaluation and safe range of intake.
