Nutraceuticals are substance that provides health benefit and help protect our system against diseases that tend to be chronic. Sometimes they are also called functional foods or natural foods but they have little difference I think but in simple terms, nutraceuticals are bioactive compounds that are usually found in foods, herbal products, vitamins, fortified dairy products, dietary supplements and including antioxidants. These products have different health benefits and they help prevent disease and also help to serve as medicinal purpose.
While functional foods are foods that goes beyond essential nutrients, they are rich or enhanced foods that contains ingredients that provides health benefits or promoting properties above the normal nutrient value. In other words, they are foods that health benefits or additional benefits when combined with other ingredients e.g. Berries, broccoli, cashew, pear, apple, spinach, banana, and orange. These are not just the only ingredients; there are also some edible plants like the gold or purple potatoes that are purposely bred for this purpose.
Personally, I believe 80% of the well-being of humans is dictated on the consumption of nutritious food that serve has health benefit and help protect our body or system from chronic diseases and some the diseases they help us fight are degenerative diseases. They are diseases which destroy any tissue or important organs when affected within a period of time and such diseases are Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer's disease which affects the nervous system. They also help us fight some common health issues like hypertension and coronary disease etc.
There are different types of plants, vegetables and fruits that are naturally health promoting or enhance substance and their consumption can help fight these common diseases that are health threatening especially cancer, gastrointestinal tract, and other cardiovascular diseases. There are so many fruits and plants that help fight diseases and benefit our health all we need is more research about them and focus on how to balance our diet by adding more fruits to it. I saw an article that says women consume more fruits and vegetables than men because men hardly prioritize them when having their meal I don’t really know how true this though.
There are many articles or research that has proven that consumption of vegetables and fruits will reduce the risk of contracting degenerative diseases that are harmful to the health and some common vegetables recommended are the raw ones like tomatoes, carrots, green vegetables and most especially the ones that has rich antioxidant because they are rich and capable of more or less reducing or removing the harmful disease with constant consumption of the antioxidants vegetables over a period of time.
In summary functional foods are consumed as a normal diet which have physiological benefits and help fight or reduce the risk of contracting diseases more than the normal nutritional functions. Functional foods are usually prepared using technologies that usually produce the ingredients and they contain the required amount of nutrients that the body needs to be healthy. So now that we know about functional foods and its benefit, we should probably start considering more fruits and vegetables to have a balanced diet to prevent any chronic or degenerative disease.
I will be promoting a quote which I love most about health from 
The quote says:
There's no way to argue that we rush too much, we forget to take a break, notice the small things in life, embrace the little happiness around us. And as a result, we produce too much stress, anxiety and this leads to getting depression. Not only that, we become less excited about life, we miss out, we forget to celebrate for little things.