The Antioxidant Potential of Fermented Foods: Challenges and Future Trends

Dear Colleagues,

The major role of antioxidant compounds in preserving food shelf-life, as well as providing health-promoting benefits, combined with the increasing concern towards synthetic antioxidants, is increasingly leading the scientific community to focus on natural antioxidants.

Polyphenols, bioactive peptides, amino acids, and vitamins are among the most common antioxidant compounds naturally present in foods. Nevertheless, enabling further improvements of food antioxidant activity in vitro, which could potentially reflect on that in vivo, is a topic of utmost significance. The bioconversion elicited by the use of microbial enzymes and/or fermentation with selected starters can be considered as a tool to enhance the activity of bioactive compounds by facilitating their release or changing their structural conformation. Yet, the elucidation of new bioconversion pathways, the study of antioxidants bioavailability and bioaccessibility, as well as their faith during in vivo digestion is an area that still needs exploring.

In this framework, this Special Issue aims at covering the most recent advances in the use of fermentation as a mean to enhance food antioxidant potential. We welcome authors to contribute with their knowledge and expertise to further shed light on the relationship between fermentation and foods antioxidant features. Potential topics include but are not limited to:

• identification of novel antioxidants and bioactive compounds in a variety of fermented foods and their physiological activities;
• screening and use of microbial starters for functional fermented food with antioxidant potential;
• microbial metabolic pathways related to the antioxidant properties of fermented foods;
• use of bioprocessing technologies to synthesize or release of bioactive compounds having antioxidant features;
• optimization of fermentation and bioconversion conditions to maximize the production and physiological activities of antioxidants;
• assessment of beneficial effects in vitro, ex vivo and/or in vivo of fermented food antioxidant compounds;

Original papers as well as up-to-date reviews on these topics are welcome. We look forward to receiving your interesting work.

Dr. Michela Verni
Prof. Dr. Carlo Giuseppe Rizzello
Guest Editors

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