The 4th International Niigata Symposium on Diet and Health held on Nov 29-30, 2008 in Niigata, Japan Title: 'Integrated Functions of Diet in Anti-aging and Cancer Prevention'

摘要

It is well recognized that the daily diet plays a critical role in disease prevention and health promotion."Food is medicine" is an old tale in the oriental traditional medicines but we need to reevaluate thisidea with modern scientific approach. Indeed the physiological or pharmacological functions of foodfactors attract attention and were classified as the third function of food in addition to the nutritionaland sensory roles as the primary and secondary function, respectively. Following to the early studiesof active ingredients as antioxidant, molecular studies on the mechanism of action have been developedin many active ingredients such as certain flavonoids and non-flavonoids from plants as food resource.Accumulated data on such food factors and their biological functions not only suggest the importance offood design of daily diet but also facilitates development of functional foods or neutraceuticals designedfor health promotion and disease prevention. Chemoprevention and anti-aging is the important fieldof study of food factors and the combination of western medicine and dietary factor becomes morepromising approach to treat complex diseases including cancer.