Food Proteins and Peptides Focused on Functional and Bioactive Properties

Dear Colleagues,

Protein is an essential macronutrient for maintaining human health requirements, but its nutritional quality is highly variable and complex from a food industry perspective. Moreover, proteins and their interactions establish different food functional properties (solubility, emulsification, foaming, and gelling) and nutritional quality, but food processing could also change these features. Most changes in the protein structure lead to Maillard compounds, the oxidation of sulphur amino acids and other molecules from undesirable side-reactions. To control all of these parameters, the fields of research and analytical tools involved are highly heterogeneous and multidisciplinary, such as proteomics, peptidomics, metabolomics, spectrometry, or bioinformatics. Furthermore, bioactive peptides, produced by the enzymatic hydrolysis of proteins, have been clearly demonstrated having a wide range of applications in human health in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases. The optimization of the absorption and bioavailability of the peptides to develop new functional foods is not yet completely resolved, and opens up new opportunities. Indeed, peptides with different biological activities (antioxidant, antihypertension, anticancer, etc.) must be absorbed, transported, distributed, and retained correctly in the fluids, cells, and tissues in order to have a biological effect. Overall, industrial-scale technologies of bioactive peptides are still at an early stage being developed in pharmacological and food applications.

Dr. Daniel Franco
Dr. María López-Pedrouso
Dr. Jose M. Lorenzo
Guest Editors

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