Health issues affecting women include those directly linked to the female reproductive system as well as others like osteoporosis. This review of bioactives will cover ingredients for classic female concerns.

An August 2002 U.S. patent issued to Innovative Foods Inc. provides a method of infusing nutrients such as vitamins, phytochemicals, herbal extracts and medicinals into fruits, vegetables and other underutilized food products.

A new protein isolation process developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with funding from America's dairy farmers and sponsored by DMI, can make a difference for children with PKU (phenylketonuria), an inherited metabolic disorder that strikes one baby in every 10,000.

With numerous health benefits supported by strong scientific evidence, flax lignans have much to offer manufacturers targeting specific categories of wellness seekers, including consumers in the fast-growing men's health category.

The food and nutritional industries tend to "deconstruct" foods. With the aid of science, healthy constituents are found and extracted and/or purified, and then promoted as supplements for food fortification.

Probiotic products have been marketed for a number of years, primarily in the yogurt category or as live microbial dietary supplements whose biological activity needed to be preserved. This tends to limit their consumption to supplements taken after meals or in fresh dairy foods. One technology now makes it possible to "have your probiotic and eat it, too!"

Research increasingly supports the medicinal benefits of food ingredients.

Even "empty calorie" food and beverages provide needed calories, if little else, to the human body. And, at the other extreme, more than a few plants have historical use not only as a food but for their medicinal benefits as well.