Bioactive Ingredients in Functional Foods: Molecular Nutrition Mechanisms and Disease Prevention

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: closed (15 December 2023) | Viewed by 2676

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Institute of Agricultural Biology and Biotechnology (IBBA), National Council of Research, Pisa, Italy
Interests: food chemistry; nutraceuticals; functional foods; disease prevention
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Agricultural Biology and Biotechnology (IBBA), National Council of Research, Pisa, Italy
Interests: animal models; functional foods; toxicology

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Agricultural Biology and Biotechnology (IBBA), National Council of Research, Pisa, Italy
Interests: animal models; functional foods; toxicology; disease prevention

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Bioactive food ingredients are non-essential substances found in foods that can modulate one or more metabolic processes, resulting in enhanced health. More than ever, functional diets have attracted bioactive ingredients as an alternative to conventional treatments of many diseases.

Components of functional foods are usually present in different forms, such as glycosylated, esterified, thiolylated, or hydroxylated forms. In particular, bioactive food ingredients are believed to be found mainly in plant foods, such as whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. Similarly, animal products such as milk, fermented milk products, and cold-water fish also contain bioactive components such as probiotics, conjugated linolenic acid, long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid, and bioactive peptides.

Chronic diseases (including diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases) and inflammatory-based diseases (such as rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and Crohn’s disease) are life-long conditions that significantly impact quality of life. Bioactive food ingredients have increasingly become attractive alternatives to ameliorate some of the risk factors and symptoms associated with these chronic conditions.

This Special Issue aims to provide an overview of the current knowledge pertaining to the main molecular mechanisms that connect nutritional intake to chronic disease prevention. 

Dr. Luisa Pozzo
Dr. Andrea Vornoli
Dr. Vincenzo Longo
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • nutraceuticals
  • bioactive compounds
  • functional foods
  • disease prevention
  • chronic diseases
  • molecular mechanisms

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

18 pages, 1850 KiB  
Article
Chlamydomonas agloeformis from the Ecuadorian Highlands: Nutrients and Bioactive Compounds Profiling and In Vitro Antioxidant Activity
by Teresa Grande, Andrea Vornoli, Valter Lubrano, Francesco Vizzarri, Andrea Raffaelli, Morena Gabriele, Jeniffer Novoa, Carla Sandoval, Vincenzo Longo, Maria Cristina Echeverria and Luisa Pozzo
Foods 2023, 12(17), 3147; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods12173147 - 22 Aug 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1678
Abstract
Green microalgae are single-celled eukaryotic organisms that, in recent years, are becoming increasingly important in the nutraceutical, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical fields because of their high content of bioactive compounds. In this study, a particular green microalga was isolated from freshwater highland lakes of [...] Read more.
Green microalgae are single-celled eukaryotic organisms that, in recent years, are becoming increasingly important in the nutraceutical, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical fields because of their high content of bioactive compounds. In this study, a particular green microalga was isolated from freshwater highland lakes of Ecuador and morphologically and molecularly identified as Chlamydomonas agloeformis (ChA), and it was studied for nutritional and nutraceutical properties. The phenolic composition and the fatty acids profile of lyophilized cells were determined. The methanolic extract was analyzed for the phenolic compounds profile and the antioxidant capacity by means of in vitro tests. Finally, Human Microvascular Endothelial Cells (HMEC-1) were exploited to explore the capacity of ChA to reduce the endothelial damage induced by oxidized LDL-mediated oxidative stress. The extract showed a good antioxidant ability thanks to the high content in polyphenolic compounds. The observed decrease in HMEC-1 cells endothelial damage also was probably due to the antioxidant compounds present in the extract. Based on the outcomes of our in vitro assays, ChA demonstrated to be a promising source of bioactive compounds possessing exceptional antioxidant capacities which make it a prospective functional food. Full article
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