Marine Nutraceuticals

Abstract

The awareness that health comes from the diet goes back to the ancient times of Hippocrates (Kadam and Prabhasankar 2010). Marine organisms have been always present in the human diet (especially in the Orient) and their benecial role has been underlined, such as the source of vitamins, minerals, polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), amino acids, dietary bers, and other bioactive chemicals (Ganesan et al. 2010). Many compounds isolated from marine organisms (microorganisms, algae, invertebrates, vertebrates) are benecial to health, considering nutritional and pharmacological values (Kim 2013). The approach that uses the marine resource as the raw material in the production of specialized products is gaining an increasing interest. Marine organisms are able to produce chemicals with health benets because of their method of adaptation to extreme environmental conditions (Mayakrishnan et al. 2013).