Trends in Food Science & Technology最新文献

Background

Rising living standards have heightened the demand for fresh, safe, and nutritious food, necessitating advanced food quality and safety monitoring technologies. Electrospun nanofibers (ENFs) are gaining increasing attention as key materials in the development of high-performance sensing platforms for food safety and quality monitoring owing to their high surface area, porosity, and customizable structures.

Scope and approach

This review provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances in the application of ENFs for food analysis. It highlights their roles and mechanisms in detecting environmental toxins, identifying foodborne pathogens, analyzing food components, and monitoring freshness. Furthermore, the benefits, limitations, and future development directions of ENFs in food analysis are discussed.

Key findings and conclusions

ENFs can serve as effective materials for sample pretreatment, enhancing detection sensitivity, streamlining procedures, and reducing detection times through target analyte adsorption and enrichment. They also hold considerable potential as scaffolds for sensors that enable rapid and accurate detection of various food analytes. However, challenges related to standardization and environmental impact must be addressed to transition ENFs from laboratory research to practical applications.

Background

α-Linolenic acid (ALA, 18:3n-3) is an essential omega-3 (n-3) fatty acid that cannot be synthesized by the human body, widely used in fields such as food, health products, and pharmaceuticals. In recent year, ALA has gained much attention for its potential health benefits. However, the unsaturation of ALA makes it highly prone to oxidation, and its bioavailability within the human body is relatively low, which requiring a suitable carrier to encapsulate it, thereby enhancing the antioxidant property and bioactivity of ALA.

Scope and approach

This review summarizes the research progress of ALA in recent years. It aimed to outline the extraction methods, metabolic pathways and beneficial effects in the human body of ALA. The review finally discusses the widely used carriers in recent year.

Key findings and conclusions

ALA, a natural plant ingredient, has positive biological effects. Despite its limited conversion to eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA, 20:5n-3) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, 22:6n-3) in the body, research has demonstrated that ALA can still be beneficial on its own. Moreover, the stability of ALA is a concern, so developing a system to enhance its stability, improve digestion and absorption is important. This review highlights the value of ALA, promotes the development of new nutritional products, and provides insights for future research.

Background

Over several decades, osmotic dehydration has been used extensively to dehydrate fruits and vegetables. However, it is a time consuming process and leads to poor rehydration ability along with loss of nutrients. To overcome these shortcomings, ultrasound waves are integrated with osmotic dehydration, a process referred to as osmosonication. It is a non-thermal, energy efficient, promising technology with enormous potential to prolong shelf life while maintaining nutritional characteristics.

Scope and approach

Extensive work has been done on osmosonication in the last decade. The objective of this review is to provide a complete paradigm on osmosonication by discussing its working mechanisms and applications for various types of fruits and vegetables. Additionally, its effect on mass transfer kinetics, physicochemical, nutritional and structural properties of individual fruits and vegetables have been discussed. This review also covers the empirical and mathematical models applied during dehydration, factors affecting osmosonication, and its advantages and disadvantages.

Key findings and conclusions

Osmosonication leads to the formation of microchannels in the food matrix, improving the mass transfer rate and reducing drying time. Fruits and vegetables like kiwi, strawberry, apple, plum, potato, aonla and mushroom pretreated with osmosonication were found to have an improved nutritional profile, enhanced physicochemical properties and better overall quality of the final food product, along with improved mass transfer characteristics. Additionally, osmosonication has also assisted in achieving improved retention of bioactive compounds, refined colourimetric results, a good rehydration ratio and a fair weight reduction in the final product. Moreover, osmosonication increased dry matter content, reduced titratable acidity and lowered hardness in the final product, leading to better sensory properties compared to osmotically dehydrated fruits.

Background

Livestock and poultry and their meat products (LPMP) are significant in providing human nutrients. However, the presence of off-flavors such as boar taint from pork, “mutton” odor from mutton, and so on poses challenges to consumer acceptability. Hence, exploring the sources of off-flavors and ways to reduce off-flavors is particularly vital for the increasing consumption of the market.

Scope and approach

This review discusses the causes and mechanisms of off-flavor formation, and the physical, chemical, and biological means of off-flavor removal in LPMP are systematically and comprehensively reviewed. Finally, it summarizes the current challenges and prospects of off-flavors control in LPMP.

Key findings and conclusions

Before slaughter, the off-flavors like boar taint, “grazing” flavor, etc. may be affected by species, sex, and feeding conditions. During the slaughtering, environment, and method may have an influence. Subsequently, handling methods at the stages of cooking and processing, packaging and storage can affect the development of specific off-flavors like “warm” and “rancid” flavors. These off-flavors are primarily attributed to lipid oxidation and degradation, protein oxidation and degradation, and microbial metabolism. Lastly, some novel removal techniques including electrolyzed water, ultrasound thawing, supercritical carbon dioxide, cold plasma, antioxidant active film, microbial fermentation, etc. which have shown good properties in slowing off-odors are summarized. The trend of composite methods, smart technologies, and blockchain is expected to show promising prospects in the future. These can provide certain ideas for the improvement of the quality and the industrial development of LPMP.

Background

Food waste (FW) in restaurants and catering arises from inefficiencies throughout food preparation, handling, and disposal stages. Addressing these inefficiencies via FW upcycling into value-added products presents a sustainable strategy to mitigate waste and advance environmental sustainability.

Scope and approach

This study explores the global impact of food waste, factors influencing its generation, and potential environmental benefits from waste prevention. It examines consumer food waste rates, where approximately 17.5% of prepared food is discarded, comprising kitchen waste (2.2%), serving waste (11.3%), and customer leftovers (3.9%). It explores methodologies used to estimate food waste across EU countries, comparing waste management practices in the UK and the Netherlands. It investigates food waste strategies in China, particularly in ethnic restaurants, and considers consumer perceptions regarding packaging's role in waste reduction. Additionally, the study covers sustainable waste management practices in Asia, including pre-treatment techniques such as upcycling, microbial conversion, anaerobic co-digestion, and 3D food printing, aimed at reducing waste by 20–30%. Furthermore, it evaluates machine learning models for predicting catering demand with 85% accuracy and analyzes a 25% reduction trend in waste within Swedish public catering.

Key findings and conclusions

The study highlights challenges and future prospects in repurposing food waste within restaurant and catering sectors. Presently, only 10–15% of food waste is repurposed, with potential to increase to 30–40% through enhanced practices and technologies. Continued research and innovation in sustainable waste management can potentially reduce overall waste by 25%, conserve resources, and foster a more sustainable food system.

Objectives

The study aimed to present the current trend during the 10 years study in the valorization of brewers’ spent grain (BSG) derived compounds in food products from processing, nutritional improvement, and sensory acceptability.

Results

The study discovered that BSG-derived compounds have been used in a variety of food products such as bread, cookies, baked snacks, pasta, noodles, muffin, yogurt, plant-based yogurt, ready to drink, confectionary, sausage, burgers, and mayonnaise. BSG flour was reported to reduce fat and sugar thus potentially as fat replacer and sugar reduction in food products. Several BSG-derived compounds in food products are reported including dried BSG flour, water fraction from fresh BSG, and protein hydrolysates. The main impact of BSG in food processing is its ability to modify the matrix formation of food products which at certain levels could diminish the textural properties thus negatively affecting the sensory acceptability. Several modifications have been made in order to improve the desirability of BSG-derived compounds in food products such as ingredients modification (e.g., sugar modification, oil vegetables, and others), utilizing pre-treated BSG (e.g., fermented, cooked, and extruded), and extraction of interest compounds (e.g., water fraction, protein, and BSG residue utilization).

Conclusions

Although the evidence of BSG as a sustainable food ingredient has been clear, the study showed that lack of investigation was made in the commercialization approach such as big scale production and consumer familiarization on BSG-added food products which delay the feasibility of technological readiness and system readiness level.

Background

Foodborne hazards are substances potentially present in food that cause harm to human health. If mishandled or inadequately tested, these hazards have the potential to contaminate food, entering the human body through the food chain, thereby causing foodborne illnesses and posing a risk to human health. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct research on the detection of foodborne hazards. Through accurate detection of hazardous substances in food, food safety issues can be identified and controlled in a timely manner to ultimately protect public health.

Scope and approach

This review systematically discusses the applications of carbon nanomaterials-based colorimetric and fluorescent dual-mode sensors toward foodborne hazards in food matrices. Both the advantages and disadvantages of carbon nanomaterials-based colorimetric and fluorescent dual-mode sensors are compared with those of conventional methods in the detection of foodborne hazards in detail. In addition, the mechanisms of carbon nanomaterials-based colorimetric and fluorescent dual-mode sensors toward foodborne hazards are discussed and highlighted as well.

Key findings and conclusions

The carbon nanomaterials-based colorimetric and fluorescent dual-mode sensors can detect foodborne hazards sensitively, efficiently, conveniently and reliably. Future research will focus on developing smart carbon nanomaterials-based trimodal and even more modes sensors for onsite efficient point-of-care testing of foodborne hazards in complex food matrices, safeguarding food safety and public health.

Background

Organophosphorus pesticides (OPs) are the most widely used pesticides in agriculture, while their residues pose a potential threat to food safety and human health. The monitoring of OPs levels in food is of utmost importance. Meanwhile, the phenomenon of mixed-use multiple types of pesticides in agricultural production leads to the rise in analytical error. Identifying and discriminating multiple species of OPs with similar chemical structures is still challenging.

Scope and approach

Given the superior characteristics of colorimetry, in this review, colorimetric sensing strategies of OPs detection are first classified and summarized with specific recognition elements (biotic or abiotic) as the breakthrough point. Secondly, the colorimetric sensor arrays (CSAs) for OPs monitoring are reviewed, highlighting the design principles and analytical performances of chemometrics integrated CSAs for achieving simultaneous identification and discrimination of OPs in food. Finally, the current challenges and future perspectives in this hot topic are also discussed.

Key findings and conclusions

Emerging colorimetric sensors have showed great potential for the detection of OPs in food. Chemometrics integrated CSAs can efficiently conquer the deficiency of conventional “lock-and-key” sensing mode and inject new vitality for the identification and discrimination of multi-OPs.

Non-dairy milk is still considered as a relatively new food product category and has been a debatable topic until today, from its name, nutritional benefits, labelling, to whether the product sensory characteristics should be similar or different to cow's milk. In this letter, we firstly clarified the term “Protein Blend” to describe blends of whole plant milks and plant-dairy ingredients, rather than isolated proteins or protein-rich fractions. We also addressed the inaccurate categorisation of quinoa and buckwheat as cereals instead of pseudo-cereals from a scientific view. Secondly, we acknowledged the potential for food-drug interactions in plant-based milk alternative (PMBA) products, and stress the need for consumer education and systematic research to mitigate these risks and ensure safe pharmacotherapy. Lastly, we explored whether shelf-life of PMBA products is important in influencing consumer perceptions. In conclusion, PBMAs represent an emergent, sophisticated, and controversial topic within food science. This emerging field combines advanced technological developments with shifting consumer preferences, sparking debates across nutritional, environmental, and economic implications. The original article by Lee et al. (2024) was written through the lens of consumer perceptions, using terminologies that predominantly reflect consumer language, which may differ from more technical or scientific definitions. This notable discrepancy underlines the need for further research to bridge the gap between consumer understanding and scientific discourse. We hope this letter clarifies the discussed issues and encourages further research aimed at aligning scientific understanding with consumer perceptions, and fostering collaboration among food lawmakers, food scientists, and health professionals to ensure accurate labelling, and the safety and efficacy of pharmacotherapy involving PBMAs, particularly in light of potential food-drug interactions within this emerging product category.

Background

Active polysaccharides are a class of important active ingredients extracted from natural substances, which are used in the fields of food, medicine and health care. As a natural intestinal microecological regulator, active polysaccharides are widely used to regulate intestinal microecology, intestinal tumors, and intestinal inflammation due to their abundant availability, stable efficacy, and few side effects. With the increasing use of active polysaccharides in therapeutic studies for a variety of gut-related diseases, it is increasingly important to explore their effects on gut and organismal health.

Scope and approach

This review focuses on the effects of the monosaccharide composition of polysaccharides, the type of glycosidic bonding, and molecular weight size on organisms, providing a theoretical basis for food and drug development. The modulatory effects of active polysaccharides on the gut microbiota, mechanical barriers, immune barriers, and mucus barriers are summarized, and the mechanisms of action of active polysaccharides in the host are discussed. In addition, this review describes the effects of active polysaccharides on the health of the body, including enhancement of antioxidant and immune system function, antitumor and inflammation-reducing effects, and blood glucose and lipid level regulation.

Key founds and conclusion

Active polysaccharides have a broad application prospect in the food and drug field, so this review provides new ideas for food and drug development by presenting the latest research in the field of active polysaccharides use to maintain intestinal health and their protective effect on the overall health of the organism.