Search

Glucosinolates (GSLs) are a prototypical group of bioactive compounds found in the Brassicaceae family that promote human health and plant defense. The GSL-myrosinase system can be induced to release multiple bioactive products when plants are subjected to mechanical damage, environmental stress, or pathogen infection. While many GSLs promote human health, some cause deleterious effects when ingested. To engineer Brassicaceae crops with lower levels of harmful GSLs without sacrificing health-promoting GSLs requires a complete understanding of the origin and advances in GSL modification. Extensive early domestication studies were conducted using classic breeding and plant nutrition. More recently, genetic modification of specific groups of GSLs or levels of GSLs in specific tissues has been partially successful. However, efforts have fallen short of delivering a reduction in potentially harmful GSLs without concomitant losses to health-promoting effects and plant defense. The latest work has been to synthetically express GSL biosynthesis pathways in non-host crops or microbial species. However, yields have been far from economically sustainable. This review discusses key advances made in GSL modification that are promising for the precise modification of GSL content and composition for optimal plant defense and human health.

In Saudi Arabia, tourism is becoming increasingly popular, and forms an essential element of Vision 2030. Accordingly, food service establishments (FSEs) including hotels, ordinary restaurants, heritage restaurants and productive families (i.e., home-based catering) provide heritage cuisine to tourists. This study aimed to assess the authenticity and safety risks associated with the production of heritage food dishes in different FSEs. An online questionnaire was administered in Saudi Arabia, and a total of 85 culinary professionals from different FSEs responded. The culinary professionals were requested to provide opinions on the frequency of food safety and authenticity risk situations at their FSEs, using a five-point Likert scale. The results indicate that most food safety risk situations occur less frequently in hotels because of strict food safety management systems. In contrast, food safety risk situations are more frequent in ordinary and heritage restaurants, particularly in the absence of personal hygiene requirements. In productive families, most food safety risk situations occur because there are no control systems or inspections. Authenticity risks occur less frequently in productive families and heritage restaurants than in other FSEs. Hotels often/always face authenticity risk situations, such as cooking of heritage dishes by non-Saudi culinary professionals and the use of modern equipment. Ordinary restaurants face the highest risk, mostly because of the limited knowledge and skills of the cooks. Overall, this study provides the first insight into the occurrence of possible safety and authenticity risk situations during the preparation of heritage dishes; this information may contribute to improve the production of safe and authentic heritage dishes in the hospitality industry for tourists and local people.

The main aim of the current study was to examine and compare the nutritional quality and degree of naturalness of chocolate and cereal bars. Our analysis relied on a dataset (n = 100) of the most consumed chocolate and cereal bars in Germany in 2019. The Nutri-Score and the Food Naturalness Index were calculated to measure nutritional quality and naturalness of the bars, respectively. Cereal bars were nutritionally better and slightly more natural, but had longer ingredient lists, as compared to chocolate bars. Nutritional quality and food naturalness were only weakly correlated, which suggests that they are two distinct food characteristics. Despite increased criticism regarding the effects of ultra-processed foods on health, our results suggest that not all ultra-processed foods are necessarily unhealthy. Although there is plenty of room for improvement in the formulation of cereal bars, they have the potential to be a healthier and more natural alternative to chocolate bars.

For the production of healthier fruit snacks, vacuum frying is a promising alternative for atmospheric frying, to reduce the oil content, while maintaining a high nutritional quality. This paper evaluates the effect of ripening stages, frying temperature, and time on the quality of vacuum-fried mango. Unripe mango was dehydrated faster than ripe mango and had a higher hardness after frying at 110 and 120°C. Fat content in fried ripe mango was higher. Total ascorbic acid and β-carotene in both ripening stages were not different, but after frying total ascorbic acid in unripe mango remains higher. A novel image analysis was applied to quantify the color distribution of fried mango. Color changes in unripe mango were more susceptible to temperature and time. Considering all quality parameters, vacuum frying of unripe mango at the optimal condition of 100°C for 20 min is preferred for producing high-quality healthier fruit snacks.

In this study, the effect of berry polyphenols on starch digestion was tested in vitro both by co-digestion of berry extract with bread or by fortifying bread with berry extract. Results show that the co-digestion of bread with berry extracts significantly reduce the rate and extent of starch digestion. Sixty one percent of starch digestion is inhibited by co-digesting 1 g of raspberry extract with 4 g of the bread. The inhibition obtained by co-digesting berry extracts and bread is much higher than the inhibition obtained by digesting berry-fortified bread. Interactions of polyphenols with matrix reduce polyphenols bio-accessibility, thus reducing the amount of polyphenols available for α-amylase inhibition. The interaction of polyphenols and starch seems also a crucial mechanism for the inhibition of starch digestion. This study shows that the co-ingestion of berry polyphenols with bread is a promising strategy to reduce glycaemic index of starchy food.

Chewing disrupts broccoli cells, and myrosinase can effectively hydrolyze the glucosinolate glucoraphanin into the biological active sulforaphane. The influence of chewing time and steaming time on glucoraphanin hydrolysis as well as sulforaphane and sulforaphane nitrile formation in broccoli was studied.To study the effect of chewing time on differently steamed broccoli, broccoli was chewed for 11 s, 22 s, 30 s and 40 s by volunteers. To determine the effect of steaming time, raw and steamed broccoli samples were chewed for 22 s. Glucoraphanin, sulforaphane and sulforaphane nitrile were analyzed in all samples. Longer chewing times of raw, 0.5-min and 1-min steamed broccoli, which contained active myrosinase, lead to a higher hydrolysis. The highest hydrolysis rate of glucoraphanin was found in 0.5-min steamed broccoli (38%) and 2-min steamed samples which contained the highest sulforaphane concentration. This could lead to a recommendation to steam broccoli for a short time before consumption.

Cape gooseberry is a fruit recognised for having relevant contents of health-promoting compounds. Changes in the content of phytochemicals (ascorbic acid, β-carotene, catechin and epicatechin), hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) and antioxidant activity of this fruit were studied at various temperatures and times. Ascorbic acid degradation was described by a first order reaction. β-carotene was not degraded and followed an isomerization reaction from 80 °C onwards. Formation of HMF was described with a consecutive zero together with a first order reaction model. The contents of catechin and epicatechin increased at 40 °C. More than three competing reactions did not allow to make kinetic modelling. Antioxidant activity followed fractional first order conversion model. Comparison with kinetics found in other fruits showed that health-promoting compounds of cape gooseberry are relatively more stable to heat treatment. This makes cape gooseberry suitable for the preparation of foods (jam, juices and dehydrated fruit) with relevant health-promoting compounds contents.

Strychnos cocculoides fruit is an important food source for rural populations in Zimbabwe in times of scarcity. Its thick pulp tightly adheres to its seeds, causing pulp extraction constraints and waste during processing, leading to underutilisation. Therefore, pectinase maceration combined with heat treatments was studied to improve juice yield and juice quality. Metabolite profiling according to the heat map, FancyTile chromatic scale approach and phenolic compound content were used to compare the identified compounds. Prior to treatments, 16 known phenolic compounds, predominantly belonging to the phenolic acids, flavonoids and iridoid glucoside classes, were tentatively characterized for the first time in S. cocculoides using High Resolution Mass Spectrometry and LC/MS/MS. Overall, results showed that enzymatic treatments increased pulp yield (by 26%), physicochemical quality (38% increase in juice clarity), content of phenolic compounds (predominantly kaempferol, quercetin, caffeic acid, protocatechuic acid, iridoids) and antioxidant activity.The improved extraction of S. cocculoides pulp increases juice yield as well as juice quality by supplying larger amounts of phenolic compounds that have potential health benefits and act as dietary sources of antioxidants for the prevention of diseases caused by oxidative stress.

Glucosinolates (GLSs), health promoting compounds commonly found in Brassica vegetables, were studied during sayur asin fermentation made from Indian mustard (B. juncea). The current preliminary study aims to investigate the changes of glucosinolates content during 3 and 7 days of fermentation in two different media, i.e. coconut water and tajin liquor, and salt concentrations of 2.5 and 10%. The glucosinolates were analysed by HPLC after sample extraction in hot methanol followed by purification and de-sulphation. Results show that sinigrin was the most dominant glucosinolate among others, i.e. gluconapin, glucobrassicin, 4-hydroxy-glucobrassicin, 4-methoxy-glucobrassicin, and neo glucobrassicin, accounting for about 1000 and 4000 µmol/10 g dw in raw Indian mustard. Unfortunately, fermentation has substantially reduced the glucosinolates content in sayur asin. After 3 days of fermentation the sinigrin content was reduced by 95% as compared to that in the raw vegetable. The indole GLSs 4-methoxy-glucobrassicin and neo-glucobrassicin concentration decreased to 80-90% of the fresh materials. However, the decreasing mechanisms as well as factors contributing to the decrease of the glucosinolates could not be explained yet.