Effect of medicinal and food homologous plants polysaccharides on animal nutrition and health: A review

Abstract As one of the most important components of foods, animal meat provides a lot of protein, fat, and energy for humans. However, nutrition and health of animals directly affect the healthiness of human, especially antibiotic residues in animals induced by abuse of antibiotics. Therefore, it is important to develop safe and efficient feed additives to improve nutrition and health of animals. With advantages of high efficiency, no toxicity, little or no side effect, and no residue, medicinal and food homologous plants polysaccharides have shown potential practicality to improve nutrition and health of animals possibly instead of antibiotics. Based on the present review, it was found that medicinal and food homologous plants polysaccharides had better health promotion effects on poultry than those of livestock and aquaculture with the main delivery method of dietary supplementation, which might be because of the inherent species differences and convenient experimental procedures. Meanwhile, immunoregulatory activity was the dominating action mechanism that medicinal and food homologous plants polysaccharides affected nutrition and health of animals, followed by antioxidant activity, metabolism regulation, and antiviral activity. This work will provide help to enhance animal nutrition and health via using medicinal and food homologous plants polysaccharides as feed additives.