Supplemental food

#This invention relates generally to food supplements or supplemental food for mammals, especially, but not exclusively, humans.

#Practicing good nutrition is challenging. Even with an understanding of the current nutritional science, it can be difficult to follow a well-designed diet regularly. In addition to lapses in discipline, specific foods or foods which are good sources of a particular nutrient may be unavailable or inconvenient when needed. These challenges are compounded when attempting to obtain the benefit of helpful interactions between different foods or different nutrients.

#Nutritional supplements have evolved, first from general vitamin and mineral supplements based on Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA) generally determined by studying different nutrients in isolation, to more sophisticated general vitamin and mineral supplements, to “supplemental foods” or “food supplements”. Whole-food supplementation seeks to provide the nutritional benefits of a food (as opposed to an isolated nutrient, which might be derived from a food, or synthesized or isolated from a non-food product) without the volumetric or caloric intake of consuming the food itself. This approach permits convenient, concentrated nutrient uptake in a form that mimics the mixture of nutrients found in a whole food, and, therefore, the helpful interactions between different nutrients that naturally occur in a particular food.

#As used herein, the term “supplement” refers to a composition intended to supplement a diet of food and water, where the diet is sufficient to support life. A supplement may contain vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, enzymes, organ tissues, glandular metabolites, or combinations thereof. A supplement may be an extract or concentrate of a particular food source or a particular nutrient. Supplements may be administered by any convenient means, including parenteral or enteral routes. Enteral routes may include oral, gastric, or subgastric administration, including rectal administration.

#In a preferred form, the supplements of the present invention are administered orally. Oral administration forms include, without limitation, tablets, capsules, softgels, gelcaps, liquids, powders, and films, as well as food-like forms such as bars, candies, lozenges, beverages, and the like.

#As used herein, the term “supercritical gas” or “supercritical fluid” refer to a gas is that heated to a temperature critical point, over which the gas will maintain its gaseous state and not turn to a liquid regardless of pressure. A gas heated to a temperature above its critical point will become very dense on compression, so that its characteristics resemble those of a fluid, but will not become liquid. Carbon dioxide is commonly used in applications requiring a supercritical fluid. The general properties of supercritical fluids and the general use of supercritical fluids in extraction processes are described in, e.g. Taylor, Supercritical Fluid Extraction, Wiley, 1996; McHugh and Krukonis, Supercritical Fluid Extraction: Principles and Practice, 2nd ed., Butterworth-Heinemann, 1994; and Williams and Clifford, Supercritical Fluid Methods and Protocols, Humana Press, 2000.