2009 Volume 6 Issue 2 Pages 45-51
Red koji has been used for a variety of fermentation food such as sake from old in China and South Korea, etc. and it has also been used from a Ryukyu dynasty for Tufuyo, a traditional bean curd food preparation in Okinawa in Japan, and “Red koji color (Monascus color)” extracted from Red koji is widespread as natural colorant.
Recently, lovastatin (Monacolin K) that has the hypocholesterolemic activity is discovered from a part of Red koji, though statins are prescription medicines used now for about 30 million people all over the world to decrease LDL-cholesterol that is the risk factor that causes atherosclerosis, and moreover the Red koji that contains this natural statin becomes available for the processed food such as dietary supplement, and it is expected a beneficial use in the primary care of the lifestyle disease by the eating habits improvement. In this paper, we would like to clarify the history as the food of Red koji, the active ingredients as the functional food material and the mechanism, the effectiveness and safety, including the clinical trial results such as improvement of lipid metabolism, and also introduce the probability as the beneficial material for complementary and alternative medicine as well as for dietary supplement in health conditioning and the prevention of the lifestyle disease.
