Preface

Due to changing lifestyles and consumer awareness, there is a trend towards choosing healthy, nutritious, and safe food. Therefore, scientists and researchers are focusing on developing functional foods, an emerging field of food science that claims health-promoting benefits. Functional foods are just like traditional foods but with the potential to offer health benefits beyond proper nutrition. They may also be considered natural remedies against various diseases due to their bioactive components. Nutraceuticals can be used anonymously with functional foods. The bioactive components present in functional foods and nutraceuticals are sensitive to different processing technologies; therefore, researchers and scientists are continuously trying to adopt processing technologies like ultrasound, high-pressure processing, and irradiation, all of which minimally affect the bioactive components present in functional foods.

This book comprehensively discusses different phytochemicals, such as antioxidants, that have great potential for radical scavenging activity and play a role in the prevention of various types of disorders. Different products based on functional foods contain many therapeutic bioactive compounds that improve one's immunity to combat various types of health-related issues.

> **Muhammad Sajid Arshad and Muhammad Haseeb Ahmad** Department of Food Science, Government College University Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Pakistan
