Health care: natural attraction of plant extracts

With the enhancement of the improvement of living standards and health awareness, people of medicine and food safety, the health of the Green function more and more attention, plant extracts, natural products, health has attracted more and more consumers welcome and praise, the market continues to expand the scale, to 2013 global plant extract sales have exceeded $54 billion, and still maintain a rapid growth rate. In the national industrial policy support, the market demand continues to release, the industry gradually standardized and other favorable factors, the joint promotion of plant extracts industry prospects are very good.

An overview of plant extracts, plant extracts are plant as raw materials, in accordance with the need to extract the use of the product, through physical and chemical extraction and separation process, and concentration in plant directed to obtain one or more effective components and does not change its effective component structure, finally formed products. In accordance with the composition of different plant extracts can be divided into glycosides, acid, polyphenol, polysaccharide, flavonoids, terpenoids, alkaloids and other categories; according to different product characteristics, can be divided into vegetable oil, extract, powder, and other types of lens.

A variety of plant extracts, has now entered the industrial extraction has reached more than 300, it is a kind of important intermediate products, wide application field, which can be used for pharmaceutical raw materials, but also can be used for health care products, nutritional supplements, food additives, cosmetics and other industries.

In 1980s two, the development of plant extracts industry, basically complete the industrialization of Europe and other developed countries set off the trend of returning to nature, people have the side effects of chemical synthesis products attention and rejection increased gradually, on the natural and safe plant extracts with regression, highly respected, potential industry should rise. In 1994, the United States promulgated the "dietary supplement health and Education Act", formally recognized by the use of plant extracts as a food supplement, the plant extract industry has developed rapidly.

China's traditional Chinese medicine has a long history, medical personnel attention to the analysis of the characteristics and properties of plants. To 1970s, the domestic part of the pharmaceutical plant began to use mechanical equipment to extract plant ingredients, but this is only as a manufacturing process of medicine, has not developed into an independent industry. After the middle of 90s, with the deepening of the degree of opening up, foreign trade began to flourish, the policy of less control of the plant extract industry began to develop.

Since twenty-first Century, the plant extract industry has entered the golden era. To enhance the improvement of living standards on the one hand, the source and health awareness to the people of the strong demand of plant extracts products; on the other hand, benefit from the more advanced plant extraction techniques (such as enzymatic extraction, ultrasonic extraction, supercritical extraction, microwave extraction, membrane separation technology and other new applications), greatly improve the production efficiency.