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 | Viewed by 553

Special Issue Editors


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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

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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

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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

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

28 pages, 3865 KB  
Review
Recent Advances and Future Perspectives on Heat and Mass Transfer Mechanisms Enhanced by Preformed Porous Media in Vacuum Freeze-Drying of Agricultural and Food Products
by Xinkang Hu, Bo Zhang, Xintong Du, Huanhuan Zhang, Tianwen Zhu, Shuang Zhang, Xinyi Yang, Zhenpeng Zhang, Tao Yang, Xu Wang and Chundu Wu
Foods 2025, 14(17), 2966; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods14172966 - 25 Aug 2025
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Abstract
Preformed porous media (PPM) technology has emerged as a transformative approach to enhance heat and mass transfer in vacuum freeze-drying (VFD) of agricultural and food products. This review systematically analyzes recent advances in PPM research, with particular focus on spray freeze-drying (SFD) as [...] Read more.
Preformed porous media (PPM) technology has emerged as a transformative approach to enhance heat and mass transfer in vacuum freeze-drying (VFD) of agricultural and food products. This review systematically analyzes recent advances in PPM research, with particular focus on spray freeze-drying (SFD) as the dominant technique for precision pore architecture control. Empirical studies confirm PPM’s efficacy: drying time reductions of 20–50% versus conventional VFD while improving product quality (e.g., 15% higher ginsenoside retention in ginseng, 90% enzyme activity preservation). Key innovations include gradient porous structures and multi-technology coupling strategies that fundamentally alter transfer mechanisms through: resistance mitigation via interconnected macropores (50–500 μm, 40–90% porosity), pseudo-convection effects enabling 30% faster vapor removal, and radiation enhancement boosting absorption by 40–60% and penetration depth 2–3 times. While inherent VFD limitations (e.g., low thermal conductivity) persist, we identify PPM-specific bottlenecks: precision regulation of pore structures (<5% size deviation), scalable fabrication of gradient architectures, synergy mechanisms in multi-field coupling (e.g., microwave-PPM interactions). The most promising advancements include 3D-printed gradient pores for customized transfer paths, intelligent monitoring-feedback systems, and multiscale modeling bridging pore-scale physics to macroscale kinetics. This review provides both a critical assessment of current progress and a forward-looking perspective to guide future research and industrial adoption of PPM-enhanced VFD. Full article
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