Functional Food in Emerging Markets: The Italy-India Joint Research Programme 2015

We are pleased to introduce this special issue of the Open Agriculture Journal, dedicated to the bilateral research project on nutrition, obesity and overweight in children, which has been approved within the Executive Programme of Scientific and Technological Cooperation between the Italian Republic and the Republic of India for years 2012–2014, extended to 2015, under the joint support of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Indian Ministry of Science & Technology.

The goal of the bilateral project, led by the University teams of professionals headed, respectively, by Dr. Ileana Baldi (University of Padova, Italy) and Prof. Achal Gulati (Maulana Azad Medical College & LN, New Delhi), is indeed to create a collaboration network to promote the development of a common model for investigating the role inter-played by nutrition and behavioural and clinical aspects in children obesity in the two countries.

The attention is focused on functional foods, that are foods consumed as part of the normal diet, that contain biologically active components which offer the potential of enhanced health or reduced risk of disease. Functional food are naturally included in the Indian diet, representing an important source of nutrients for children, and are constantly added to the Italian food system. This journal supplement will present several functional foods, highlighting the dietary, nutritional and public health implications of these foods. In addition, the mechanisms of controlling satiety are investigated.