1
|
Garcia-Perez P, Cassani L, Garcia-Oliveira P, Xiao J, Simal-Gandara J, Prieto MA, Lucini L. Algal nutraceuticals: A perspective on metabolic diversity, current food applications, and prospects in the field of metabolomics. Food Chem 2023; 409:135295. [PMID: 36603477 DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2022.135295] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/20/2022] [Revised: 11/16/2022] [Accepted: 12/21/2022] [Indexed: 12/24/2022]
Abstract
The current consumers' demand for food naturalness is urging the search for new functional foods of natural origin with enhanced health-promoting properties. In this sense, algae constitute an underexplored biological source of nutraceuticals that can be used to fortify food products. Both marine macroalgae (or seaweeds) and microalgae exhibit a myriad of chemical constituents with associated features as a result of their primary and secondary metabolism. Thus, primary metabolites, especially polysaccharides and phycobiliproteins, present interesting properties to improve the rheological and nutritional properties of food matrices, whereas secondary metabolites, such as polyphenols and xanthophylls, may provide interesting bioactivities, including antioxidant or cytotoxic effects. Due to the interest in algae as a source of nutraceuticals by the food and related industries, novel strategies should be undertaken to add value to their derived functional components. As a result, metabolomics is considered a high throughput technology to get insight into the full metabolic profile of biological samples, and it opens a wide perspective in the study of algae metabolism, whose knowledge is still little explored. This review focuses on algae metabolism and its applications in the food industry, paying attention to the promising metabolomic approaches to be developed aiming at the functional characterization of these organisms.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Pascual Garcia-Perez
- Nutrition and Bromatology Group, Faculty of Food Science and Technology, Ourense Campus, Universidade de Vigo, E32004 Ourense, Spain; Department for Sustainable Food Process, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Via Emilia Parmense 84, 29122 Piacenza, Italy.
| | - Lucia Cassani
- Nutrition and Bromatology Group, Faculty of Food Science and Technology, Ourense Campus, Universidade de Vigo, E32004 Ourense, Spain; Centro de Investigação de Montanha (CIMO-IPB), Campus de Santa Apolónia, Bragança, Portugal
| | - Paula Garcia-Oliveira
- Nutrition and Bromatology Group, Faculty of Food Science and Technology, Ourense Campus, Universidade de Vigo, E32004 Ourense, Spain; Centro de Investigação de Montanha (CIMO-IPB), Campus de Santa Apolónia, Bragança, Portugal
| | - Jianbo Xiao
- Nutrition and Bromatology Group, Faculty of Food Science and Technology, Ourense Campus, Universidade de Vigo, E32004 Ourense, Spain; International Research Center for Food Nutrition and Safety, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
| | - Jesus Simal-Gandara
- Nutrition and Bromatology Group, Faculty of Food Science and Technology, Ourense Campus, Universidade de Vigo, E32004 Ourense, Spain
| | - Miguel A Prieto
- Nutrition and Bromatology Group, Faculty of Food Science and Technology, Ourense Campus, Universidade de Vigo, E32004 Ourense, Spain; Centro de Investigação de Montanha (CIMO-IPB), Campus de Santa Apolónia, Bragança, Portugal
| | - Luigi Lucini
- Department for Sustainable Food Process, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Via Emilia Parmense 84, 29122 Piacenza, Italy
| |
Collapse
|