The Microbiological Functionality and Safety of Fermented Foods

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Background

Fermentation is one of the oldest techniques used in food processing and preservation. A variety of fermented foods have been developed, produced, and consumed worldwide for thousands of years to provide nutrients for human needs without being affected by seasonal availability or the environment. Over the past decades, a variety of fermented foods and their ingredients have been proven to promote human health. Due to their health promoting functions, such as anti-obesity, anti-diabetic, anti-dyslipidemic, anti-atherogenic, and anti-inflammatory effects, fermented foods are gaining popularity around the world. As a result, production, consumption, exports, and imports of fermented foods continue to increase year after year.
In the meantime, as humans have been steadily ingesting fermented foods for centuries or millennia and because food scientists have focused mainly on researching the health-promoting effects of the foods, the safety issues of fermented foods have been overlooked. Fermented foods are not free from a variety of microbiological safety issues because the foods cannot be processed by conventional sterilization methods. Also, it is difficult to improve the quality of fermented foods because the foods are often produced by traditional methods. For this reason, there is still the risk of food poisoning and spoilage caused by contaminated pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms, especially spore-forming bacteria, in fermented foods.
Therefore, while the evaluation of the health functionality and safety of fermented foods is beneficial, alongside their research, food scientists must also strive to improve the health functionality and safety of fermented foods due to the presence of desirable or undesirable microorganisms. In other words, it is necessary to consistently identify, monitor, and control desirable or undesirable microorganisms, as well as microbial metabolites present in fermented foods. It is also necessary to develop and combine biological, physical, and chemical control technologies to improve the health functionality and safety of fermented foods.
This special issue will focus on new information from research on the subject above. The subjects include, for instance, the identification or determination, monitoring, and control of food fermenting microorganisms (such as prolific lactic acid bacteria and bacilli) associated with beneficial microbial metabolites (such as γ-aminobutyric acid and poly-γ-glutamic acid) present in fermented foods, as well as food contaminating microorganisms (such as emerging pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms and spore-forming bacteria) associated with harmful microbial metabolites (such as microbial toxins, biogenic amines, and ethyl carbamate). Furthermore, such subjects could include descriptions of novel knowledge and strategies to improve health functionality and safety by controlling the growth and metabolism of food microorganisms present in fermented foods through the use of starter, protective or prolific cultures, food additives and other control technologies or equipments, alteration of intrinsic and extrinsic factors related to food fermentation, and/or further optimization of fermentation conditions, as well as novel health-promoting functions and unexpected hazards of fermented foods resulting from the presence of microorganisms and their metabolites. Please submit your latest research results or review articles on the microbiological functionality and safety of fermented foods to be published in this special topic.

Keywords: safety, fermentation, functional foods

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