Comparison of Current State In Japan and Other Countries

摘要

Around 20 years ago, Japan put forth a new idea to the rest of the world that food ingredients have some specific effects in regulating biological functions. Food items that have such effects have been distinguished from conventional health food or nutritional food, and are defined as "functional food", being positioned between medicine and general food. Research in this area has made a substantial progress in the past two decades as it adopted research approaches of physiology, pharmacology, molecular biology and other disciplines beyond traditional methodologies of nutritional studies. Meanwhile, in 2003, the human genome was completely deciphered. It triggered exploitation of the uncovered genome sequences to elucidate diseases, medical treatments, improvements in health and health control.