Academic literature on the topic 'Health-promoting proprieties'

Due to rising consumer preference for natural remedies, the search for natural antiviral agents has accelerated considerably in recent years. Among the natural sources of compounds with potential antiviral proprieties, berries are interesting candidates, due to their association with health-promoting properties, including antioxidant, antimutagenic, anticancer, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and neuroprotective properties. The past two decades have witnessed a flurry of new findings. Studies suggest promising antiviral proprieties against enveloped and non-enveloped viruses, particularly of cranberries, blueberries, blackcurrants, black raspberries, and pomegranates. The aim of this review is to assemble these findings, to list the implied mechanisms of action, and thereby point out promising subjects for research in this field, in the hope that compounds obtainable from natural sources such as berries may be used someday to treat, or even prevent, viral infections.

ABSTRACT: Flaxseed (Linum usitatissimum) is the richest source of the plant lignan secoisolariciresinol diglucoside (SDG). In mammals, including bovine, SDG is converted to the mammalian lignans enterolactone (EL) and enterodiol (ED) by the action of gastrointestinal microbes. There is a great deal of interest in promoting increased intakes of lignans in humans’ diet due to the potential health benefits of mammalian lignans, especially in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases, hypercholesterolaemia, breast and prostate cancers, and osteoporosis. Consumption of milk and dairy products enriched in EL could be an excellent strategy to increase the intake of lignans by humans. This literature review will focus on presenting feeding strategies capable to improve milk enterolactone concentration. Research has demonstrated the potential of flaxseed meal (FM) feeding to dairy cows as a strategy to improve milk EL concentration, therefore enhancing milk nutraceutical proprieties. A considerable number of studies have demonstrated that feeding vegetable lignans-rich sources, such as FM, to dairy cows improves EL in milk. Additionally, it has been reported that changes in the carbohydrate profile of FM-based diets fed to dairy cows can alter the output of milk EL. The application of animal nutrition as a tool to increase nutraceutical properties of milk (i.e. increased EL concentration) is a valuable strategy for promoting the association of milk with humans’ health benefits and is of great interest in contemporary society. Keywords: nutraceutical proprieties, bioactive compounds, lignans, dairy cows, disease risk reduction

Autumn olive (Elaeagnus umbellata Thunb.) is a deciduous shrub tree widely distributed in Asia and Southern Europe and grown as ornamental species. It is locally used for human consumption, as relevant medical value is attributed to the berries. Information about its composition, especially concerning the characterization of bioactive and health-promoting compounds, is limited. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the main bioactive compounds and nutraceutical proprieties of autumn olive fruits, via high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) fingerprint and spectrophotometric analysis, in order to strengthen the knowledge about this underrated species and promote potential applications as a food supplement. Concerning nutraceutical traits, total polyphenolic content (325.366 ± 13.019 mg of gallic acid equivalents (mg GAE)/100 of fresh weight (g FW)) and total anthocyanin content (194.992 ± 0.817 mg of cyanidin-3-O-glucoside (mg C3G)/100 g FW) recorded considerable values. The phytochemical fingerprint revealed the presence 23 bioactive compounds. Polyphenols (65.56%) were the largest class, followed by monoterpenes (27.40%) and vitamin C (7.04%). Anthocyanins were the most represented compounds among polyphenols (71.9%). The antioxidant capacity (20.031 ± 1.214 mmol Fe2+/kg) was similar to that recorded for other small fruits with proven health-promoting properties. The present work underlined the potential of E. umbellata as a source of health-promoting bioactive compounds. Further studies should deepen the knowledge of nutraceutical aspects, which turned out to be interesting.

Lactobacillus strains with the potential of protecting fresh dairy products from spoilage were studied. Metabolism and antifungal activity of different L. plantarum, L. brevis, and L. sakei strains, isolated from Sardinian dairy and meat products, were assessed. The metabolite fingerprint of each strain was obtained by GC-MS and data submitted to multivariate statistical analysis. The discriminant analysis correctly classified samples to the Lactobacillus species and indicated that, with respect to the other species, L. plantarum had higher levels of organic acids, while L. brevis and L. sakei showed higher levels of sugars than L. plantarum. Partial Least Square (PLS) regression correlated the GC-MS metabolites to the antifungal activity (p < 0.05) of Lactobacillus strains and indicated that organic acids and oleamide are positively related with this ability. Some of the metabolites identified in this study have been reported to possess health promoting proprieties. These overall results suggest that the GC-MS-based metabolomic approach is a useful tool for the characterization of Lactobacillus strains as biopreservatives.

Objetivou-se descrever estratégias nutricionais para aumentar as propriedades nutracêuticas do leite, incluindo principalmente estratégias para o aumento nas concentrações de enterolactona (EL) e ácido linoleico conjugado (CLA). Os compostos EL e CLA, ambos produzidos endogenamente a partir de componentes da dieta, são compostos bioativos presente no leite e têm sido apontados como compostos nutracêuticos, capazes de melhorar a saúde humana através da prevenção e tratamento de doenças. Estratégias nutricionais aplicadas na alimentação de vacas leiteiras possibilitam o aumento da concentração destes compostos no leite, tornando possível a produção de leite com maior potencial de beneficiamento a saúde humana. A inclusão de fontes de lignanas vegetais, como por exemplo, o farelo de linhaça e a inclusão de fontes de sacarose na dieta de vacas leiteiras possibilitam aumentar a concentração de EL no leite. Da mesma forma, o fornecimento de fontes ricas de ácidos graxos polinsaturados, como por exemplo, os óleos vegetais, possibilita o aumento da concentração de CLA no leite. A temática da nutrição animal voltada para o aumento das propriedades nutracêuticas do leite, apesar de estar iniciando, apresenta grande perspectiva, e é uma ferramenta valiosa para promoção da associação do leite com benefícios a saúde humana. Palavras-chave: nutracêutico; compostos bioativos; lignanas; vacas de leite; benefícios do leite; redução do risco de doenças. Nutritional strategies to improve nutraceutical proprieties of milk: improvements on milk enterolactone and conjugated linoleic acid ABSTRACT: This study aimed to describe nutritional strategies to increase milk nutraceutical properties, including mainly strategies to increase the concentrations of enterolactone (EL) and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). Enterolactone and CLA are endogenously produced from dietary components and have been identified as nutraceutical compounds with the potential of improving human health through the prevention and treatment of diseases. The concentration of these compounds in milk can be modulated through nutritional strategies which enable to produce milk with greater potential for improving human health. The inclusion of vegetable lignans sources, such as flaxseed meal and the inclusion of sucrose sources in the diet of dairy cows increase the concentration of EL in milk. Feeding sources of polyunsaturated fatty acids, such as vegetable oils, results in increased concentration of CLA in milk. The application of animal nutrition to increase nutraceutical properties of milk is a valuable tool for promoting the association of milk with human health benefits and is of great interest. Keywords: nutraceutical proprieties; bioactive compounds; lignans; dairy cows; health benefits of milk; disease risk reduction.

In the recent years, the consumer choices have been focused on health-promoting plant-based food and their preferences are oriented towards regional foodstuff from local productions. Therefore, an important factor for vegetables grown Trentino-Alto Adige (Italy) is to point out the added value of alpine farming to evaluate the nutritional values of farming products. Omics technologies (e.g. genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics) are aimed at investigating the assessment of different pools of molecules and how they are translated into the structure, function, and dynamics of a biological system or systems in order to provide a comprehensive characterization of a specific organism. Research use the omics techniques to exhaustively understand the functionality of food components. Several sophisticated chromatographic methods, spectroscopic techniques and chemometric tools are applied to give an insight into a comprehensive overview of the intrinsic quality, typicality and regionality of specific plant-based foods in the present PhD thesis: apples and potatoes. The quality of these foods is evaluated by quantifying the secondary metabolites to investigate their nutraceutical values. The aim of this PhD project is to use several analytical techniques (LC-MS, UV-VIS) that are capable of comprehensively characterizing the food metabolome with particular emphasis on those components with high nutritional values. The data analysis and data handling of omics data requires advanced bioinformatic, statistical, and chemometric tools. Potatoes and apples are chosen as target matrices for these studies for their relevance in the local economy and for the peculiar chemical composition of particular interest for their health-promoting proprieties. The information is acquired using several sophisticated chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques, such as ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (UHPLC– MS/MS) and UV/VIS. It is integrated to chemometric approaches (principal component analysis (PCA), partial least square regression (PLS), and data fusion) to achieve a comprehensive targeted chemical characterization. The sampling procedures gathers, in the case of the potatoes study, reference cultivars that may be found in the common retailers of Trentino/Alto-Adige and different production areas, the apples of 22 cultivars were harvest from the fields of the Laimburg Research Centre (Vadena, Italy) to guaranty comparability of the obtained data. Our results may be used as solid foundation for a reliable evaluation of apples and potatoes healthy "potential" value based on cutting-edge techniques, which are capable of providing comprehensive data regarding the alpine food quality parameters with high efficiency and reliability