Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Integrated strategy for the safety investigation of novel food ingredi...
Coordinator
MetaOmics and MultiOmics approaches will be used for the identification and quantification of toxic compounds in novel sources or ingredients, also to anticipate risks related to novel foods and new sustainable food processes. The culture collection from task 3.1.1 will be used for challenge experiments in pilot plants mimicking industrial manufacturing. Food toxicants in new ingredients and food processing technologies will be evaluated (in connection with Spoke 2). Allergenicity (also with computational approaches) and toxicity will be considered by in vitro and in vivo tests. Exposure assessment and risk- benefit assessment (RBA) of novel foods will be performed.
Report on the formation, accumulation, and modification of food toxicants along the food production chain
Toxicological evaluation of bioactive novel foods can result more complex compared with synthetic pharmaceuticals. The quality and safety of the food derived compounds represent a concern, since the use of bioactive foods is recently raising thanks to their beneficial health properties; for this reason, the health risk posed by active components and toxic contaminants is emerging.
Antinutrients represent a nutritional disadvantage of novel foods, since they negatively impact on the nutritional profile, preventing other nutrients to be absorbed. The presence of antinutrients has been detected in several foodstuffs and their detection levels can change after some peculiar pretreatments of the matrix, generally used to improve extraction of molecules and to improve food quality. The ultrasonication and temperature treatments on proteins extracted from soybean okara, lead to lower levels of phytic acid. Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) are other antinutrients formed after the Maillard reaction, and they can be present in foods, resulting pro-inflammatory.
In this project the Isolation, analysis, chemical and biological characterization of the bioactive components (proteins/peptides, lipids, and phytocomplexes) by a MultiOmics approach, from different food sources (raw materials and/or by-products) to obtain new safe ingredients/novel foods with nutritional and health-promoting activity will be carried out.
Sustainable pre-treatment technology (ultrasonication, supercritical fluid extraction, microwaves) will be applied for improving the extraction/production yields of food components. Using a combination of techniques, the composition and the safety of the novel ingredients will be assessed using an integrated strategy (in vitro techniques, HPLC-MS\MS approaches will be employed, whilst in silico tools will be used to foresee foods toxicity. The phytic acid and AGEs contents will be measured. The possible oxidant activity or changes in antioxidant properties of novel food ingredients and the presence of antinutrients will be evaluated.
This project will develop new safe ingredients with nutritional and health-promoting activity from different food sources (raw materials and/or by-products) for the development of novel foods. The bioactive components (proteins/peptides, lipids, and phytocomplexes) will be isolated, analyzed and characterized from a functional and safety point of view.
