Critical reviews in food science and nutrition最新文献

Cheese, a widely consumed dairy product globally, derives its commercial value primarily from its flavor and textural characteristics that crucially determine consumer acceptance. The quality of cheese including flavor and texture is intricately related to the enzymatic activities of microorganisms during the fermentation process. Among these enzymes, lipases play a pivotal role by hydrolyzing milk fat to generate free fatty acids, which serve as precursors for the formation of key flavor compounds, thereby significantly enhancing the sensory attributes of cheese. Compared to lipases sourced from animals or plants, microbial lipases offer distinct advantages, including lower production costs, broader substrate specificity, and greater adaptability to genetic modification, making them more suitable for large-scale cheese production. Recent advancements in biotechnology have enabled the optimization of microbial lipase applications in cheese manufacturing through various innovative approaches. This review comprehensively examines the impact of microbial lipase on cheese quality, particularly in terms of texture and flavor development. Additionally, it summarizes current strategies for enhancing the efficacy of microbial lipase in cheese production, providing valuable insights for the advancement of enzyme-modified cheese industry.

Edible vegetable oils are rich in nutrients and essential ingredients for daily cooking. However, fraud, expired products, deceptive labeling, and false origin claims in the vegetable oil industry pose significant risks to consumers' health, safety, and economic well-being. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop portable techniques to realize the authenticity of edible vegetable oils. This review presents recent advancements and applications of portable technologies for ensuring the authenticity of edible vegetable oils, including portable spectroscopy, portable sensors, portable sensory arrays, and smartphone analyzers. After briefly introducing this mechanism, this review discusses the application of these portable technologies to vegetable oil authenticity. Finally, future research directions, potential challenges, and practical steps are outlined to address concerns related to the authenticity and traceability of vegetable oils. This review highlights recent advancements in portable technologies for rapid and on-site authentication of edible vegetable oils. Key technologies achieve detection accuracies exceeding 90%, addressing adulteration and origin mislabeling issues, with potential applications for industry and consumer-level quality control.

Food hazards cause severe human illness and death worldwide every year. DNA walker possesses ingenious design and adaptable function. The structural advantage enables the DNA walker to accurately identify molecules and perform efficient mechanical movement. This feature provides a potential platform for food analysis. However, some reviews are roughly classified according to the structure of the walker, and some are only classified according to the biosensors used in analysis. Different from these, this review is the first time to show how DNA walkers achieve signal amplification in the analysis process according to the classification of major food hazard factors. Various examples of the application of DNA walkers in food safety, including the detection of pathogens, mycotoxins, and other hazard factors, will be covered. To better comprehend the functions of DNA walkers, we firstly and innovatively propose a "wagon model", and simplify the integration of key driving forces to classify DNA walkers. Furthermore, this review broadens the application of DNA walker and provides a more powerful molecular tool for food analysis. The in-depth direction should focus on improving the operational efficiency and sensitivity of the DNA walker, enhance the anti-background interference ability, and on-site detection capabilities for food safety analysis.

Background: Milk extracellular vesicles (mEVs) are emerging as important mediators in gut pathology and cancer management. These stable nanoscale vesicles contain bioactive cargos including microRNAs, proteins, and lipids that facilitate intercellular communication and offer therapeutic opportunities.

Scope and approach: This review examines mEVs' role in gut health and cancer therapy, synthesizing recent evidence from 2021 to 2025 across various milk sources (camel, bovine, equine, ovine, human).

Key findings and conclusions: mEVs significantly enhance intestinal health by strengthening epithelial barriers, modulating immune responses, and improving gut microbiota composition. In colitis models, they reduce inflammation, improve intestinal integrity, and restore microbial balance. Additionally, mEVs show promising cancer treatment applications, functioning as natural anticancer agents and efficient drug delivery vehicles. Their biocompatibility, tumor-targeting capabilities, and ability to enhance therapeutic efficacy while reducing toxicity address key limitations of conventional therapies. mEVs represent a promising frontier in preventive and therapeutic interventions for gastrointestinal disorders and cancer, positioning them as valuable candidates for future clinical applications in food-based therapeutics and precision medicine.

Epidemiological studies show that dietary factors significantly impact human health, influencing both harmful and beneficial outcomes in the gastrointestinal tract. In vitro 2D models have been used to study these mechanisms but fail to replicate critical intestinal processes. Human intestinal organoids, which better mimic the cellular complexity of the human intestine, offer a promising alternative. However, challenges such as culture variability, passage-dependent heterogeneity, and lack of immune and vascular systems remain, requiring advances in organoid technology for dietary research. This review provides a framework for utilizing intestinal organoids to study dietary impacts on intestinal health markers. Key considerations are model selection, organoid construction, quality assessment, exposure regimens, and data analysis. In construction, stem cell origin, culture matrix, and medium composition are compared, with insights into how each affects organoid functionality. Quality assessment strategies, including morphology, passage-dependent changes, and cell-type marker expression, are discussed. Advancements in AI-based tools for imaging and data quantification are also highlighted. This review offers actionable insights and practical considerations to refine experimental approaches, improving the relevance and reproducibility of human intestinal organoid models in dietary research.

Food packaging films based on soy proteins have the good biodegradability, sustainability, renewability and environmentally friendly property. Therefore, the development and modification of soy protein-based films (SPBFs) gradually entered people's field of vision, have become the hot topics in the field of food packaging. The addition of polysaccharides, polyphenols, lipids and more suitable production methods are the key factors of modified SPBFs. The modified SPBFs have good mechanical properties, barrier properties and antibacterial properties, which can extend the shelf life of food and better meet the needs of consumers. This paper reviewed the recent development of SPBFs, introduced the main production technologies and key points of SPBFs, described the main types of SPBFs, discussed the functional properties of modified SPBFs, and summarized the future development and challenges of SPBFs.

Intestinal organoids have emerged as powerful tools in biomedical research, offering a physiologically relevant model of the gut that can replicate the functions and microenvironments of the human intestine. In this study, we conducted a scientific review of the development and commonly used detection methods for intestinal organoids. Drawing from existing studies, we summarized the applications of intestinal organoids in food research. Intestinal organoids have revolutionized the field of food research by providing a sophisticated and physiologically relevant model system to study the complex interactions between food components, the gut microbiota and food safety. Based on these limitations, we propose that integration of intelligent strategies such as engineering and artificial intelligence technology with intestinal organoids will become a powerful tool for food innovation and personalized nutrition in the future.

Fermented bean products (FBPs) are integral to diverse global culinary traditions, prized for their distinctive flavors, nutritional benefits, and functional properties. Despite their importance, the interplay between microbial fermentation and the quality of FBPs remains incompletely understood, necessitating further investigation. This review examines the key microbial communities involved in the fermentation of various FBPs and explores the application of multi-omics technologies, such as genomics and metabolomics, to elucidate the microbiological mechanisms influencing product quality. It highlights the potential of integrating bioinformatics and machine learning to identify critical fermentation pathways and their impact on the final product. Moreover, the review anticipates the role of emerging smart technologies in enhancing the quality and efficiency of FBPs. By applying multi-omics approaches, it is possible to pinpoint core microbial consortia linked to high-quality FBPs, offering new avenues for engineering synthetic microbial communities. Such strategies may permit more precise control over fermentation processes, optimizing both the safety and consistency of FBPs. Finally, the review outlines future research directions focused on exploiting technological innovations to improve the quality, sustainability, and safety of FBPs.

Objective: This study aims to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to examine the effects of carbohydrate supplementation on inflammatory cytokines under different exercise intensities, and to explore the interaction between carbohydrate types and exercise intensity in the regulation of inflammation. Methods: A systematic search of PubMed, EBSCOhost, Cochrane, Web of Science and CNKI. Twenty eligible studies were included, reporting on key inflammatory cytokines: IL-6, TNF-α, IL-10, IL-1β, and IL-1ra. Results: A total of 20 studies (n = 286 participants) were included. Carbohydrate supplementation significantly reduced levels of IL-6, IL-1ra and IL-10, while TNF-α levels increased significantl, and changes in IL-1β were not significan. Subgroup analysis revealed that the combination of "glucose, sucrose" had the strongest inhibitory effect on IL-6 during high-intensity exercise, while "glucose, fructose" most significantly increased TNF-α during moderate-intensity exercise. Anti-inflammatory cytokines IL-10 and IL-1ra showed a downward trend under moderate-intensity supplementation, suggesting possible suppression of negative feedback mechanisms in inflammation. Conclusion: Carbohydrate supplementation exerts a significant modulatory effect on exercise-induced inflammatory responses, with the direction and magnitude influenced by carbohydrate type and exercise intensity. In the future, the inflammatory regulatory mechanism should be further explored in depth in combination with metabolic status and training background.

Salt, as a vital food additive, is indispensable in human life. However, excessive sodium intake poses a significant risk factor for hypertension and cardiovascular diseases, underscoring the imperative for effective salt reduction and flavor enhancement strategies in the food industry. Conventional salt reduction flavor enhancement (SRFE) strategies include salt substitutes, optimized salt physical forms, salty peptides (SPs), non-thermal processing (NTP) technologies, odor-induced saltiness enhancement (OISE), and gradual salt reduction. Although numerous studies have evaluated the feasibility, consumer acceptance, and practical applications of these methods, few have comprehensively compared their underlying mechanisms. This review fills this gap by comprehensively examining the saltiness enhancement mechanisms, applications, and limitations of these strategies. Moreover, it summarizes saltiness perception evaluation methods, ranging from traditional approaches to novel intelligent sensory technologies. The analysis categorizes SRFE mechanisms into three types: molecular design, taste signal transduction, and cognitive regulation. Furthermore, novel intelligent sensory technologies, by capturing dynamic cortical responses to taste stimuli, supply crucial data for understanding the biological basis of taste encoding and perception. This review provides a holistic framework for developing next-generation, health-centric food systems to tackle global health challenges like hypertension, ultimately promote human well-being in the context of global wellness.