Spains Functional Food Market Leads Worldwide

LONDON─Spain’s functional food market leads in Europe and, possibly, the world, as one quarter of the country’s foods are considered functional, according to a recent European Functional Foods Net report.

The Spanish functional foods market was worth €3.5bn in 2006 and growing at about a percent annually, Marisa Vidal-Guevara, a research scientist at the Spanish arm of Swiss food group, said.

Vidal-Guevara said the Spanish functional foods boom is the result of a greater public concern about health, favorable regulation changes, government initiatives, technological advances and scientific backing.