Nutricines in animal feeds improve the quality of functional foods for humans.

摘要

Functional foods are now established as an important part of the food market with significant sales value. However, foods of animal origin, except for some yoghurt products, have not been widely recognized as functional foods. In reality, many foods of animal origin such as eggs, meat and dairy products can be modified towards functional foods by appropriate feeding strategies of the animals. This would allow the sale of value-added foods from animal production under the description of "functional foods." Nutricines, as the function in functional foods, are widely distributed in foods of both plant and animal origin. Functional foods of animal origin have several useful nutricines such as butyric and lactic acids, chondroitin, collagen, taurine, phospholipids and various long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids including conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). From the animal nutrition point of view, nutricines in feeds also have an important impact upon animal health, growth and productivity. In an era without the availability of antibiotic growth promoters, many nutritionists are already producing feeds that are in effect functional feeds for animals.