ABSTRACT
Functional foods are foods that include physiologically active dietary components that give health advantages beyond simple nutrition. Many functional foods have been discovered as having the potential to help prevent and treat cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of mortality in the United States. These foods include soybeans, oats, psyllium, flaxseed, garlic, tea, salmon, grapes, nuts, and stanol- and sterol-ester enriched margarine. These food products may help to reduce the risk of heart disease by lowering blood lipid levels, improving arterial compliance, lowering low-density lipid oxidation, decreasing plaque formation, free radical scavengers, and inhibiting platelet aggregation when consumed in sufficient amounts on a regular basis.
