New plant-derived ingredients

Over the centuries, people have become more conscious of health and nutrition and started to think about a balanced and healthy diet, about those food ingredients that might be harmful or that might be beneficial. It is the duty of agriculturists and food processors to fulfil these nutritional and dietary requirements by making available a greater variety of food items. The social need and consumer demand has been changing as has the reaction of the food industry in recent years. 

A wide variety of vegetables, fruits, herbs and spices and new products using a variety of new ingredients are now on view on the shelves of supermarkets. We see new products to cater for the needs of the hotel 

Smith (ed.), Technology of Reduced-Additive Foods Chapman Hall 1993 

Vigna angularis (family Leguminosae Papilionoideae) Commonly known as adzuki bean, it is considered to have originated in the Far East but is now found in India, South-East Asia, the Far East, China, the 

South America, Angola, Zaire and New Zealand. The beans are boiled or fried and often eaten with rice and ground flour they are also used in the preparation of cakes and sweetmeats. The beans are also candied. 

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Nazmul Haq of the Department of Biology, University of Southampton, England (and until recently the Director of the International Centre for Underutilised Crops at the University of London) has reviewed new plant-derived ingredients in chapter 7. A wide variety of ingredient plants and food plants are identified. These plants will be invaluable over the years ahead as resources in their own right and as genetic sources for new varieties. 

Increasingly, consumers are demanding foods that contain fewer artificial additives. Many plant-based ingredients are perceived as additives, and many are indeed modified by chemical or other means. There is, therefore, a large potential for the development of new animal-derived ingredients. 

Traditionally, lead compounds have been discovered in one of two ways. The hrst is one of trial and error. This is the way many plant and animal products and minerals have been found to be effective in the treatment of some medical disorder. For example, no one knows when the hrst person learned that chewing on the bark of the willow tree [Salix alba) helped relieve pain and reduce fever, but willow bark has been used in many cultures for untold centuries for just that purpose. Today we know that the active ingredient in willow bark is a derivative of salicylic acid (CgH4(OH)COOH), which today is sold commercially as aspirin or one of its analogs. Drug researchers continue to rely heavily on the study of folk medicines—a science known as ethnopharmacology—for the discovery of new plant and animal products that may have medical applications in the modern world. Indeed, scientists have discovered that the medical... 

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