About this Research Topic

Background

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”, says Hippocrates. Although this quote was written around 2,300 years ago, its implications still hold true today. Over the centuries, research and development efforts have identified a plethora of foods or food components with demonstrated physiological health benefits, or the ability to reduce the risk of chronic diseases. Increases in lifestyle-related health problems, as well as increasing healthcare costs, continue to drive the growing interest in food for health. It is, therefore, no wonder that bioactive food ingredients continue to draw the attention of clinicians, food ingredient manufacturers and consumers at large.

Meeting consumer needs for food with bioactive ingredients is complex as the food industry faces the challenge of feeding a growing population with food that is safe, nutritious, healthy, and also which caters for the needs of individuals with specialized diets (e.g. ‘free from’ foods, and lifestyle food choices and diets such as veganism). Moreover, the need for food manufacturers to source and manufacture their products using sustainable processes and systems, thereby maintain a healthy balance between people, planet, and profit, has also been highlighted as an outworking of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Incidentally, although there has been rapid advancement in science and technology for the production of bioactive food ingredients, the direct implications of these advancements for meeting SDGs have not been extensively explored. The production and functionality assessment of food bioactives therefore should be looked at from a systems-based and sustainability perspective.

This Research Topic welcomes Original Research, Reviews, and Commentaries from all researchers working in the health implications of bioactive food ingredients, and the role that food bioactives can play to help achieve the UN SDGs. Manuscripts focusing on, but not limited to, the following themes will be considered:
a) Food-health interrelations through a sustainability lens;
b) The role of food bioactives in meeting SDGs (Zero Hunger and Good Health and Well-Being);
c) Green chemistry approaches to the bioprocessing of food bioactives;
d) Systems-based approaches in the development of food bioactives;
e) Utilization or valorization of waste/by-products in the development of food bioactives.

Commentaries on the future directions of research and development of food bioactives and its implications for SDGs are also welcome.

Keywords: food bioactives, functional foods, bioprocessing, green chemistry, Sustainable Development Goals, waste valorization

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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