The food and nutritional industries tend to "deconstruct" foods. With the aid of science, healthy constituents are found and extracted and/or purified, and then promoted as supplements for food fortification.
Ribose is a simple, five-carbon monosaccharide, or pentose sugar, found in body cells. It is the backbone of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a key molecule in the metabolic cycle that provides energy to cells.
Ingredients pitch in for performance-enhancing products.
From Gatorade to creatine, a dietary supplement used by baseball sluggers Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire, ingredients and formulated products targeting weekend warriors, as well as professional athletes, have grown in popularity.
Research increasingly supports the medicinal benefits of food ingredients.
Even "empty calorie" food and beverages provide needed calories, if little else, to the human body. And, at the other extreme, more than a few plants have historical use not only as a food but for their medicinal benefits as well.