Bioactive Food Components/Functional Foods: From Gut Microbiota Regulation to Human Health Enhancement
A special issue of Foods (ISSN 2304-8158). This special issue belongs to the section "Food Nutrition".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 August 2026 | Viewed by 1230
Special Issue Editor
Interests: functional foods; dietary fiber; bioactive compounds; prebiotics and probiotics; postbiotics; gut microbiota; in vitro digestion; development of new functional food products; edible fungi
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
In recent years, the convergence of nutritional science, microbiome research, and metabolic studies has significantly expanded our understanding of food functionality beyond conventional nutrient supply. A growing body of evidence highlights that bioactive food components and functional foods interact dynamically with the gut microbiota, playing a crucial role in regulating host metabolism, immune homeostasis, neural signaling, and overall systemic health. These interactions offer promising dietary strategies for the prevention and management of various chronic diseases.
Despite considerable advances in characterizing how specific dietary components—such as polyphenols, dietary fibers, prebiotics, and functional lipids—modulate the gut ecosystem, key questions remain. The precise molecular mechanisms, inter-individual variability in response, and the causal pathways linking microbial shifts to tangible health outcomes require further elucidation. Moreover, translating scientific insights into safe, effective, and widely applicable functional foods, alongside establishing robust evaluation frameworks, remains a shared challenge for both academia and the food industry.
This Special Issue aims to collate cutting-edge research and comprehensive reviews in this interdisciplinary field. We welcome contributions focusing on, but not limited to, the following themes:
- Molecular mechanisms of interactions between bioactive dietary components and gut microbiota.
- Microbiome-based personalized nutritional interventions.
- The potential of functional foods in managing metabolic disorders, immune dysregulation, neurodegenerative conditions, and other chronic diseases.
- Development, efficacy assessment, and safety evaluation of novel functional food products.
- Integrative multi-omics and AI-driven approaches to decipher the “diet–microbiota–host” axis.
Through this collection, we seek to foster the translation of mechanistic discoveries into precision nutrition and health innovations, ultimately contributing to scientifically grounded strategies for human health enhancement.
Prof. Dr. Xichun Peng
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. Foods 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 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
- bioactive food components
- functional foods
- gut microbiota
- microbiome regulation
- host health
- personalized nutrition
- metabolic health
- immune modulation
- diet–microbiota interactions
- probiotics/prebiotics
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