Plants from Food to Medicine: Exploration of Boundary between Food and Medicine
Farooq Anwar1,2
1.Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, College of Pharmacy, Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz
University, Al-Kharj 11942, Saudi Arabia.
2.Department of Chemistry, University of Sargodha, Satgodha-40100, Pakistan.
Plants have been valued as a source of food, fuel and shelter since the beginning of human life. In addition to furnishing most of the nutritional requirement of the mankind and livestock, the plant kingdom also offers huge reservesof medicinal flora with remarkable applications asfolk remedies to treat and/ or cure several diseases in many parts of the world.According to World Health Organization (WHO), 70-80% of the population, especially in Asia and Africastill rely upon traditional/herbal medicine for their primary health care needs.In fact, by the last few decades, there is a revival of interest in the use of plants as a source of food and medicine. An extensive research is being focused to investigating the bioactives composition of plant foods and to elucidating the mechanisms how such bioactives impart physiological benefits. This has led to exploration of boundary between food and medicine. In this direction,many plants and herbal species having multiple nutritional and physiological benefits continued to play a vital role in the advancements of optimal nutritionand the beginning of the “science of functional foods and nutraceuticals”.The present lecture is mainly framed to discuss and highlight the potential of selected plant foods as a natural medicine. Different types of functional food componentsand medicinally important bioactives alongwith their plant sources and biological/pharmaceutical activities have been discussed.Moreover, an overview of the current global market of functional foods and nutraceuticals/natural health supplements is presented together with the depiction of the recent trends, challenges and future prospects of this fastgrowing industry.
Biography
Dr. Farooq Anwar with PhD in Analytical Chemistry has more than 15 years of research and teaching experience at different organizations including two post-doctoral fellowships completed at Canada and Malaysia. He is mainly involved in bio-analytical and phytochemistry research.Dr. Anwar,who is parentally working as Associate Professor at University of Sargodha, Pakistan, is currentlyserving at the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, College of Pharmacy, Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, Al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia. He has the honor of being selected as Fellow of the Chemical Society of Pakistan, Productive Scientist of Pakistan and TWAS Young Affiliate Fellow. He has also been awarded Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman Gold Medal/Prize-2010 (Chemistry) by Pakistan Academy of Sciences. He has supervised 10 Ph.D. and 50 M.Phil research students. Overall, he has published 200 research articles bearing an Impact Factor of 275 and Citation over 4500 to his credit.