Foods

A growing global population, combined with factors such as changing socio-demographics, will place increased pressure on the world’s resources to provide not only more but also different types of food. Increased demand for animal-based protein in particular is expected to have a negative environmental impact, generating greenhouse gas emissions, requiring more water and more land. Addressing this “perfect storm” will necessitate more sustainable production of existing sources of protein as well as alternative sources for direct human consumption. This paper outlines some potential demand scenarios and provides an overview of selected existing and novel protein sources in terms of their potential to sustainably deliver protein for the future, considering drivers and challenges relating to nutritional, environmental, and technological and market/consumer domains. It concludes that different factors influence the potential of existing and novel sources. Existing protein sources are primarily hindered by their negative environmental impacts with some concerns around health. However, they offer social and economic benefits, and have a high level of consumer acceptance. Furthermore, recent research emphasizes the role of livestock as part of the solution to greenhouse gas emissions, and indicates that animal-based protein has an important role as part of a sustainable diet and as a contributor to food security. Novel proteins require the development of new value chains, and attention to issues such as production costs, food safety, scalability and consumer acceptance. Furthermore, positive environmental impacts cannot be assumed with novel protein sources and care must be taken to ensure that comparisons between novel and existing protein sources are valid. Greater alignment of political forces, and the involvement of wider stakeholders in a governance role, as well as development/commercialization role, is required to address both sources of protein and ensure food security.

Prebiotics are a group of nutrients that are degraded by gut microbiota. Their relationship with human overall health has been an area of increasing interest in recent years. They can feed the intestinal microbiota, and their degradation products are short-chain fatty acids that are released into blood circulation, consequently, affecting not only the gastrointestinal tracts but also other distant organs. Fructo-oligosaccharides and galacto-oligosaccharides are the two important groups of prebiotics with beneficial effects on human health. Since low quantities of fructo-oligosaccharides and galacto-oligosaccharides naturally exist in foods, scientists are attempting to produce prebiotics on an industrial scale. Considering the health benefits of prebiotics and their safety, as well as their production and storage advantages compared to probiotics, they seem to be fascinating candidates for promoting human health condition as a replacement or in association with probiotics. This review discusses different aspects of prebiotics, including their crucial role in human well-being.

The food environment is a critical place in the food system to implement interventions to support sustainable diets and address the global syndemic of obesity, undernutrition, and climate change, because it contains the total scope of options within which consumers make decisions about which foods to acquire and consume. In this paper, we build on existing definitions of the food environment, and provide an expanded definition that includes the parameter of sustainability properties of foods and beverages, in order to integrate linkages between food environments and sustainable diets. We further provide a graphical representation of the food environment using a socio-ecological framework. Next, we provide a typology with descriptions of the different types of food environments that consumers have access to in low-, middle-, and high-income countries including wild, cultivated, and built food environments. We characterize the availability, affordability, convenience, promotion and quality (previously termed desirability), and sustainability properties of food and beverages for each food environment type. Lastly, we identify a methodological approach with potential objective and subjective tools and metrics for measuring the different properties of various types of food environments. The definition, framework, typology, and methodological toolbox presented here are intended to facilitate scholars and practitioners to identify entry points in the food environment for implementing and evaluating interventions that support sustainable diets for enhancing human and planetary health.

Microplastics (MPs) are considered an emerging issue as environmental pollutants and a potential health threat. This review will focus on recently published data on concentrations in food, possible effects, and monitoring methods. Some data are available on concentrations in seafood (fish, bivalves, and shrimps), water, sugar, salt, and honey, but are lacking for other foods. Bottled water is a considerable source with numbers varying between 2600 and 6300 MPs per liter. Particle size distributions have revealed an abundance of particles smaller than 25 µm, which are considered to have the highest probability to pass the intestinal border and to enter the systemic circulation of mammals. Some studies with mice and zebrafish with short- or medium-term exposure (up to 42 days) have revealed diverse results with respect to both the type and extent of effects. Most notable modifications have been observed in gut microbiota, lipid metabolism, and oxidative stress. The principal elements of MP monitoring in food are sample preparation, detection, and identification. Identified data gaps include a lack of occurrence data in plant- and animal-derived food, a need for more data on possible effects of different types of microplastics, a lack of in silico models, a lack of harmonized monitoring methods, and a further development of quality assurance.

The aim of this study was to determine the key physicochemical, sensory and quality attributes of plant-based yogurts made from soy, coconut, cashew, almond and hemp, including a dairy benchmark yogurt. The soy, coconut and cashew-based yogurts showed textural parameters comparable to the dairy yogurt, with firmness values of 0.46, 0.44, 0.51 and 0.36 N, respectively. Rheological analysis showed that one of the soy-based yogurts was similar to the dairy yogurt in terms of apparent viscosity, in addition to water-holding capacity (82.8% and 75.7%, respectively). Other plant-based yogurts, e.g., hemp, showed different rheological and textural parameters to the other plant-based products, relating this to the agar and rice starch components of the hemp formulation. The sensory analysis demonstrated that some plant-based yogurts were similarly appreciated to dairy-based products. This was due mainly to the presence of specific hydrocolloids, sweeteners and flavours in the formulations; for example, the acceptability of the soy- and dairy-based yogurts were identical (5.95). The results obtained in this study allowed identification of key quality attributes of plant-based yogurt products and highlighted relationships between such attributes and formulation, which can be exploited in future product development.

Tăng cường độ dị ứng đối với sữa bò, không dung nạp lactose, tỷ lệ mắc bệnh tăng cholesterol máu, cùng với sự lựa chọn thức ăn linh hoạt đã làm tăng thị trường cho các sản phẩm thay thế sữa bò. Các loại đồ uống chiết xuất từ thực vật không chứa sữa là những lựa chọn hữu ích vì sự hiện diện của các thành phần sinh học có lợi cho sức khỏe, thu hút người tiêu dùng ý thức về sức khỏe. Tuy nhiên, giá trị dinh dưỡng thấp hơn và sự chấp nhận về cảm quan của các đồ uống chiết xuất từ thực vật (như hương vị, mùi, và khả năng hòa tan) so với sữa bò là một mối đe dọa lớn đối với vị trí của nó trên thị trường. Các phương pháp xử lý nhiệt thường được sử dụng để đảm bảo chất lượng của các đồ uống chiết xuất từ thực vật trong quá trình bảo quản. Tuy nhiên, việc áp dụng nhiệt độ cao có thể thúc đẩy sự phân hủy của các hợp chất nhạy cảm với nhiệt và một số phản ứng bất lợi, do đó làm giảm khả năng tiêu hóa protein và sự sẵn có của axit amin trong các sản phẩm thay thế đồ uống thực vật không chứa sữa. Các công nghệ chế biến thực phẩm mới và tiên tiến như xử lý áp suất cao, đồng hóa áp suất cao, trường điện từ xung, và siêu âm đang được nghiên cứu để giải quyết các vấn đề liên quan đến việc tăng cường thời gian bảo quản, ổn định nhũ tương, bảo tồn giá trị dinh dưỡng và chấp nhận cảm quan của sản phẩm cuối cùng. Tuy nhiên, tài liệu hiện có về việc áp dụng công nghệ xử lý không nhiệt lên các tính chất vật lý-hóa học và dinh dưỡng của các loại đồ uống chiết xuất từ thực vật là rất ít. Cần có những nỗ lực nghiên cứu phối hợp trong những năm tới trong lĩnh vực đồ uống thực vật chức năng để chuẩn bị cho các sản phẩm mới, được thiết kế theo đơn đặt hàng, vừa ngon miệng vừa đảm bảo giá trị dinh dưỡng.

Due to the increasing demand for milk alternatives, related to both health and ethical needs, plant-based yogurt-like products have been widely explored in recent years. With the main goal to obtain snacks similar to the conventional yogurt in terms of textural and sensory properties and ability to host viable lactic acid bacteria for a long-time storage, several plant-derived ingredients (e.g., cereals, pseudocereals, legumes, and fruits) as well as technological solutions (e.g., enzymatic and thermal treatments) have been investigated. The central role of fermentation in yogurt-like production led to specific selections of lactic acid bacteria strains to be used as starters to guarantee optimal textural (e.g., through the synthesis of exo-polysaccharydes), nutritional (high protein digestibility and low content of anti-nutritional compounds), and functional (synthesis of bioactive compounds) features of the products. This review provides an overview of the novel insights on fermented yogurt-like products. The state-of-the-art on the use of unconventional ingredients, traditional and innovative biotechnological processes, and the effects of fermentation on the textural, nutritional, functional, and sensory features, and the shelf life are described. The supplementation of prebiotics and probiotics and the related health effects are also reviewed.

The traditional perception that legumes would not be suitable for extrusion cooking is now completely outdated. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have been conducted to assess the behavior of various types of legume flours in extrusion cooking, proving that legumes have excellent potential for the production of extruded ready-to-eat foods by partially or totally replacing cereals. This review identifies the optimal processing conditions for legume-based and legume-added extruded foods, which allow the improvement of the expansion ratio and give the extrudates the spongy and crisp structure expected by consumers. In particular, the effect of the individual processing parameters on the physical-chemical and nutritional properties of the final product is highlighted. The extrusion cooking process, indeed, has a positive effect on nutritional characteristics, because it induces important modifications on starch and proteins, enhancing their digestibility, and reduces the content of trypsin inhibitors, lectins, phytic acid, and tannins, typically present in legumes. Therefore, the extrusion of legume flours is a viable strategy to improve their nutritional features while reducing home preparation time, so as to increase the consumption of these sustainable crops.

This study is a systematic literature review of geographical origin authentication by elemental analytical techniques. Authentication and certification of geographic origin of agri-food products is a useful tool toward the protection of the quality for products. The aim of this work was to map the current state of research in the area of agricultural products and food, identifying emerging fields to the geographical origin of products. The article is divided in three parts. The first part of the article deals with the analytical techniques applied in the food authentication. Special mention is made to elemental analysis and multiple isotope ratio. The second section focuses on statistically published data concerning published research for geographical origin authentication for the period 2015–2019. Specific results are presented inter alia: number of articles according to the type of product, articles according to the type of the analytical techniques, and others. The third part contains characteristic results from articles that were published in the period 2015–2019, on certification of geographical origin on specific agricultural products.

Food pathogens frequently cause foodborne diseases. There is a need to rapidly identify the source of the bacteria in order to contain their spread and epidemics. A pre-enrichment culture or a direct culture on agar plate are standard microbiological methods. In this review, we present an update on alternative molecular methods to nucleic acid-based detection for species identification. Biosensor-based methods rely on the recognition of antigen targets or receptors by antibodies, aptamers or high-affinity ligands. The captured antigens may be then directly or indirectly detected through an antibody or high-affinity and high-specificity recognition molecule. Various different detection methods are discussed, from label-free sensors and immunosensors to fluorescence-based ones. Each method shows advantages and disadvantages in terms of equipment, sensitivity, simplicity and cost-effectiveness. Finally, lab-on-a-chip (LOC) devices are introduced briefly, with the potential to be fast, sensitive and useful for on-site bacteria detection in food processing laboratories to check potential contamination by sample monitoring combined with a rapid pre-enrichment step.