Bioactive Compounds in Plant Food: Discovering Their Health Benefits
A special issue of Foods (ISSN 2304-8158). This special issue belongs to the section "Nutraceuticals, Functional Foods, and Novel Foods".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 October 2025 | Viewed by 3048
Special Issue Editor
Interests: organic chemistry; bioorganic analytical chemistry; natural products; medicinal chemistry; spectroscopy; spectrometry; chromatography
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Food delivers nutrients that are essential for human life. Recently, there has been a remarkable rise in the production of processed foods and alterations in lifestyle. Worldwide, plant food is being increasing consumed due to several metabolic disorders linked to some diets and compounds involved in health improvement and disease protection. The World Health Organization recommends high intakes of plant-based foods, which includes eating at least 400 g of fruits and vegetables daily. Whole grains, vegetables, and fruits have been associated with bioactive non-nutritional chemical components commonly known as phytochemicals. Plant food contains minerals that are necessary components of a healthy human diet, in addition to primary and secondary metabolites. Secondary metabolites are not only crucial for the development or functioning of plants, but present bioactive constituents that influence nutrition and possess health-promoting properties. The wide variety of secondary metabolites present in plant sources include dietary fiber, oligosaccharides, glycoalkaloids, polyphenols, carotenoids, biogenic amines, fatty acids, peptides and vitamins, which have been confirmed to possess antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, or immunomodulatory properties, or improve intestinal barrier functioning, which contributes to their ability to mitigate the pathological impact of some human diseases. Plants give us vegetables, fruits, cereals and pulses. Plants also give us coffee, tea, sugar, oil and spices. We are able to source food for humans from different parts of plants, including the roots, leaves, stems, flowers and fruits.
There is an urgent need for studies to determine the presence, amount, and biological properties and health effects for humans of bioactive compounds from plant food. We encourage the submission of manuscripts to this Special Issue that address the characterization, profile composition, quantitation and health effects of bioactive compounds found in plant food via the development of innovative strategies and by means of consolidated analytical and biological methods.
Dr. Elvira Maria Sardão Monteiro Gaspar
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 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
- plant food characterization/identification
- plant food bioactive chemical composition
- bioactive compound isolation
- biological properties and health effects
- analytical methods
- biological methodologies
- novel plant food
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