ユーグレナはどこまで高栄養食源として貢献し得るか

―その機能と応用―

抄録

Food includes complicated and wide-ranging ingredients. In order to support life, we digest and absorb only necessary ingredients (nutrients), which are selectively metabolized for the formation of energy and/ or body components, to utilize the necessary nutrients. However, eating habits under full-feeding in our country seem to be in the process to transform disrupted eating habits leading to health damage, because a gap between health expectancy and life expectancy remains still large due to the development of lifestyle diseases including obesity which are caused by an unbalanced diet and/or disrupted food style. In order to bring health expectancy near to life expectancy by correcting disrupted eating habits as much as possible, we should consider the factor to reduce the gap between health expectancy and life expectancy. One of the ways to reduce the gap is a skillful application of food functions to the improvement of disrupted eating habits and also the combination of the improvement of disrupted eating habits by application of food functions with exercise can be thought to be an important factor to reduce the gap. As an example of the application of food functions to the improvement of disrupted eating habits, we will introduce the application of Euglena (Japanese name, Euglena gracilis) based on its physiological functions as a nutrient to improve disrupted eating habits in this review.