THE COMPETITIVENESS OF FUNCTIONAL FOOD PRODUCTION

Raising people's awareness about taking care of their health and development of the food industry, medicine, and those branches of science that deal with the relationship between nutrition and health has led to the popularization of the foods for which special health effects are proven. Functional foods, are foods whose longer consumption can have preventive or therapeutic effects on different aspects of human health. Most research related to functional food is concentrated on its possible health effects, while relatively little is known about consumers' reaction to it. According to the obtain results, it can be concluded that is necessary to inform consumers about functional food and its benefits in regard to conventional food. It is necessary to define market of functional food in Serbia, adopt certain regulations which can be helpful for increasing of consumers' confidence about functional food and make larger consumption of this kind of food, which can result in better health condition of the nation.