Food Innovations: Process Enhancements, Health-Promoting Product Developments, and Value-Adding Strategies

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: 5 February 2026

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Agricultural, Environmental and Food Sciences, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, 39100 Bolzano, Italy
Interests: wine; food products; mass spectrometry; chromatographic analysis; chemometrics; sensory analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Food Technology and Assessment, Institute of Food Sciences, Warsaw University of Life Sciences–SGGW, Warsaw, Poland
Interests: food analysis; food quality; food safety; sensory evaluation; sensory analysis; instrumental analysis; food science and technology; food processing and engineering; chemometric analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Today's speed of life for the average consumer is much faster than it was even a decade ago. As a consequence, the consumer demands more functions from food products than before. New trends have emerged in the market that include food improvement on many levels. These include value-adding strategies such as the addition of plant extracts, ingredient changes, inclusion of by-products in the recipe, etc. The production of nutritionally improved foods also includes new approaches to food processing. New processing methods are currently being developed to mitigate the formation of harmful substances, reduce the degradation of important bioactive compounds and reduce or completely prevent sensory changes, including colour, aroma, flavour, and texture/mouthfeel. For this purpose, new innovative processing methods are being tested like high-pressure processing, homogenization, pulsed electric field, ultrasound, microwave in flow, pulsed light and many others. Health-promoting product development must take into account the consumer acceptability of upgraded food. Therefore, analyses of sensory properties, as well as the profile of volatile compounds and other metabolites, should be performed after processing and during storage. To slow down the degradation of beneficial substances in food and improve its shelf life, stakeholders are also focusing on storage research and implementing edible coatings, modified atmosphere and smart indicators. Therefore, this Special Issue focuses on a wide range of research and future prospects of applications concerning production process enhancements, health-promoting product development and quality characaterisation, and value-adding strategies in the food industry.

Dr. Emanuele Boselli
Dr. Bartosz Kruszewski
Guest Editors

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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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

  • food fortification
  • by-products utilization
  • functional food
  • non-thermal preservation
  • chemometrics
  • sensory profiles
  • bioavailability
  • bioactive compound extraction
  • product reformulation
  • harmful substance mitigation
  • packaging innovations

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
Back to TopTop