Current Status and Prospect of Antiobesity Functional Agents

The obese population has been increasing over the world wide and obesity became a socioeconomic problems. It is become more serious by the accumulation of the knowledge that the obesity is related directly or indirectly with several diseases like, diabetes, hypertension, etc. With these reasons, many functional food or agents for the purpose of weight loss have been developed. However, most of these remedies are unproven and some have produced even dangerous side effects due to the ephedrine alkaloids contained in Ma-Hang. Because of these reasons, they banned using of these agents in US and regards the antiobesity functional agents as drugs in Europe. Several functional agents are known for weight loss activities like, HCA, L-canitine, CLA, chitosan, calcium supplements and capsaicin containing red pepper, kimchi and kochujang. We describe here about the function, efficacy and mechanism of these antiobesity functional agents. Furthermore, the trial of the mixture of weight loss related herbal ingredients for safe multifunctional antiobesity functional agents are discussed here, as well.