Imagine you have an orange and you'd like to use the flavour components in the zest of this orange. However, you don't want to use them today only. Instead, you'd like to use some now, and the rest a couple of weeks later. That orange won't keep so long though. You could buy a new orange every time you need it, but you can also try to take out the flavour components and store these. Whereas an orange might spoil, those "extracted" flavour components won't.

This is when you would use food Ingredient. Tea is another example of extraction. You extract the flavours and other tea components from the tea leaves when making tea. You don't drink the actual tea leaves themselves, but still taste the tea!

Extraction is an example of a separation technique. It can split two components, separate them apart.

Imagine you have a mixture of components A and B (for example orange zest (A) with flavours inside (B), or a vanilla bean pod (B) with vanilla flavour (A)). We'd like to take B out of A. However, A and B are very well mixed, we can't wait for B to settle out, or wait for A to evaporate. In extraction B is removed from A by adding a third compent C (the rum in the case of orange and vanilla extracts). This third component will "pull" B out of A.

Functional foods are typically classified as traditional foods that have been enriched with an ingredient (bioactive in many cases) that is able to provide additional benefits to human health. These days, a functional ingredient does not have a strict definition, however, they are broadly considered as ingredients that have the potential to influence health over and above their basic nutritional value. These ingredients can be obtained from a variety of sources such as primary produce, marine sources, microorganisms as well as inorganic raw materials. Many of these functional ingredients can also be used for the preparation of nutraceuticals which include food & beverage products as well as dietary supplements.

Nutritional and functional food ingredients can typically be classified from a source, type or health perspective. For example, from a health perspective, they can be divided into eye health, digestive health, heart health, and women's health ingredients and so on.

Nutritional ingredients are generally perceived as safe, and this assumption of safety has been used for branding purposes. Because end users are aware of nutritional benefits and consider food safety important, food and beverage producers are positioning their products to reflect the health advantages that their ingredients engender. Increasing competition among nutritional and functional food ingredients participants has led to proactive marketing, which caters to the demand of both end users and food and beverage producers for ingredients with additional health benefits.

There are many different kinds of nutritional ingredients from different extracts like Hibiscus Extract, Rosemary Extract, Natural Sweetener Powder, Cocoa Extract, Herbal Supplements Ingredients, Reishi Mushroom Extract, Echinacea Purpurea Extract, Giant Knotweed Extract, Lotus Leaf Extract, etc.