Functional Foods and Active Natural Products
A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Food Science and Technology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 May 2026 | Viewed by 1389
Special Issue Editor
Interests: bioactives; bioactives’ analysis; bioactives’ encapsulation; bioactives’ stability; food formulation; mixture design
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Functional foods enriched with bioactive compounds are a rapidly advancing area of food and nutrition science. Established fortification agents such as carotenoids, phytosterols and stanols, omega-3, and other fatty acids, proteins and peptides, fibers and prebiotics, probiotics, vitamins, coenzymes, and minerals already demonstrate well-documented benefits for health promotion and disease prevention. At the same time, novel and emerging bioactives are reshaping the functional food space. These include marine- and aquatic-derived metabolites (e.g., algal compounds, peptides, sulfated polysaccharides), rare or non-canonical plant phytochemicals (flavonoids, glucosinolates, phytoalexins, small RNAs), and precision fermentation or synthetic biology products (engineered enzymes, microbial pigments, human-identical molecules). Advances in delivery technologies such as encapsulation, nanostructured carriers, pickering emulsions, postbiotics, and microbiome-directed metabolites further enhance bioavailability, stability, and targeted action.
Dr. Haralabos Christos Karantonis
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- bioactive lipids
- plant bioactives
- marine bioactives
- synbiotics
- exosomes
- bioavailability
- stability
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