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Since the development wave of plant-based food in China from 2019, the plant-based food industry has gone through a development process from "soaring and enthusiastic" to "calm and rational". The current development of the entire industry tends to be stable and orderly. After five years of developments, the understandings of plant-based food in its development concepts nutritional characteristics, quality characteristics, processing technology, and policy regulations have basically achieved consensus throughout the industry: Plant-based food is an important way for the food industry to achieve efficient resource utilization and green low-carbon development; plant-based food could provide high-quality protein, which is beneficial for improving the dietary structure of residents; plant-based food has a clear difference from traditional vegetarian food, and it gives full play to its functional properties; the processing of plant-based food should fully realize the nutritional enrichment, quality enhancement and excellent flavor of the products; and the standardized development of the plant-based food industry needs to be supported by the corresponding policies, regulations and standards. In the future, the development of plant-based food industry should be guided by the trend of diversified market development, taking taste, price and clean label as the main problems, breaking through technological bottlenecks, thinking from multiple perspectives, diversifying the choices, and exploring its potential value to achieve the steady progress of the entire industry.

Food-microbiota-host interactions provide an overarching framework for understanding the function of the gut microbiota axis. Diet is a major modulator of gut microbiota. Plant-based foods are rich in phytochemicals; therefore, it is essential to assess such foods and elucidate the mechanisms underlying their action. In this review, we summarize the role of gut microbiota in the communication between the gut and the brain, liver, lung, kidney, and joints, as well as the role of the gut microbiota axis in diseases involving these organs. In addition, we assess the effects of phytochemicals from plant-based foods on the gut microbiota axis via different pathways.

Sustainable food production covers a wide range of perspectives and embraces issues relating to environment, economy and society. Sustainability of food production systems faces challenges ranging from environmental degradation, resource competition to elevated food demands and integration of agriculture into the global economy. Considering its far-reaching socio-economic implications, this review first provides an overview of key characteristics that distinguish sustainable food production from conventional agricultural practices. In addition, emerging green technologies in promoting sustainable food production are summarized. Among those modern techniques, urban agriculture, next-generation plant-based foods and food nanotechnology are discussed in detail. Finally, futuristic solutions and research work are proposed to provide guidance for designing sustainable Agri-Food system.

Since animal proteins may pose a threat to the global environment and human health, the development of alternative proteins has become an inevitable trend in the future. Legumes are considered to be one of the most promising sources of sustainable alternative animal proteins. Legume proteins are considered to exhibit excellent processing properties, including emulsification, gelation, and foaming, which have led to their widespread use in the food industry. Moreover, legume proteins are not only taken as substitutes for meat proteins, they also play an essential role in novel plant-based foods (meat, dairy, fermented food, and fat). However, there are few comprehensive overview studies on the application of legume proteins in plant-based foods. Therefore, this review provides a general overview of the main sources, functional properties, and applications in plant-based foods of legume proteins. In addition, challenges to the application of legume proteins in plant-based foods and specific strategies to address these challenges are presented. The review may provide some references for the further application of legume proteins in novel plant-based foods.

Highlights • Various novel food products have been developed from plants • Animal-derived foods have a higher risk of diet-related metabolic disorders • Improving PBF characteristics and nutrient composition will increase patronage • PBFs production is more environmentally friendly than animal-derived foods • PBF industry still in its infancy requiring adequate safety regulations and quality standards

IntroductionOver the past years, several efforts have been made to formulate and develop plant-based substitutes of animal-based products in response to environmental changes, health issues and animal welfare. However, plant-based protein poses several challenges to product sensory characteristics, especially appearance, flavor, and texture. Despite this, current literature data have mainly reviewed nutritional, technological, and sustainability aspects of plant-based products with limited concerns on perceived sensory properties and perceptive barriers to consumption related to each specific substitute. To fill this literature gap, this systematic review aims to provide an up-to-date overview of the perceptive determinants of consumers' acceptance of plant-based substitutes of animal-origin products, including meat, dairy, fish and eggs analogs, with emphasis on product's intrinsic properties: appearance, smell, taste, and texture. Moreover, age-, gender-, and cultural-related differences in the appreciation/rejection of plant-based substitutes of animal-origin products were investigated.MethodsThe systematic analysis of the literature consulting Web of Science (Core Collection) and Scopus databases retrieved 13 research articles on meat, 26 on dairy, and two on fish and eggs analogs.Results and discussionResults showed that all sensory dimensions are influenced by the replacement of animal proteins with those of vegetable origin. However, the relative importance of appearance, odor, taste, and texture varied according to plant-based analogs category and mitigatory processing strategies to mask unpleasant sensory properties have been suggested for each category. Dairy analogs mainly suffer of aromas and flavors imparted by the raw materials, while both meat and dairy analogs have texture challenges. Meat analogs lack of juiciness, elasticity and firmness, while dairy analogs require uniform, creamy and thick texture. Moreover, very few studies analyzed the product's perception, considering age- and gender-related differences or cross-national/cultural differences. Future research should be addressed to specific product categories such as fish and eggs analogs as well as specific population targets including children and the elderly and consumers from developing countries.

Humans are constantly facing multiple health challenges from both communicable and non-communicable diseases that significantly affect their health. Additionally, drug resistance or failure has made the situation even worse and poses serious challenges for researchers to develop new drugs. Hence, to address these problems, there is an urgent need to discover and develop timely and long-term-based therapeutic treatments from different sources. One such approach is harnessing the potential of plant secondary metabolites. Plants have been utilized for therapeutic purposes in addition to being used for nutritional benefits. In the last two decades, plant-based drug developments have been one of the effective means of treating human diseases owing to their multiple functions. More recently, anti-nutritional factors (ANFs) have emerged as one of the important targets for novel plant-based drug development due to their multifaceted and potential pharmacological properties. However, their anti-nutritional properties have been the major setback for their limited success in the pharmacological sector. In this review, we provide an overview of ANFs and their beneficial roles in preventing human diseases with multiple case studies. We also highlight the recent developments and applications of ANFs in the food industry, agriculture, and pharmaceutics with future perspectives. Furthermore, we evaluate meta-analyses on ANFs from the last 30 years in relation to their function in human health benefits. This review is an endeavor to reevaluate the merit of these natural compounds and explore their potential for both human and animal health.

Abstract Spontaneously fermented plant‐based foods are highly valued for their unique organoleptic characteristics and presumed health benefits. However, because natural (spontaneous) fermentation does not involve the employment of starter cultures, the safety of spontaneously fermented plant‐based products is not easily controlled. This review examines the presence of antibiotic resistance determinants in lactic acid bacteria (LAB) from plant‐based, naturally fermented foods. Phenotypic resistance to clinically relevant antibiotics has been widely observed in LAB from a variety of food types. The larger proportion of the resistance traits reported in this review can be considered intrinsic to LAB. However, some of the identified traits, especially resistance genes to tetracycline and erythromycin, have the potential for horizontal spread. Further molecular characterization is required to determine the genetic basis of detected resistance traits that have only been assessed using phenotypic methods. The implementation of novel safety measures in the production of spontaneously fermented plant‐based foods should be considered in the future.

Mung bean is a characteristic minor grain crop and a traditional medicine and food homologous material in China, and an important dry pulse in the world. Mung bean is high in protein and starch and rich in non-starch polysaccharides, polyphenols, flavonoids and other nutritional components, making it a popular research object of healthy food and functional activity among grain crops. This paper reviewed the research progress of nutritional components, functional ingredients (polyphenols, polysaccharides, functional proteins or peptides) and health functions such as antioxidant, lipid-lowering and hypoglycemic activities of mung bean at home and abroad in recent years. Meanwhile, the research and industrial application of mung bean in new plant-based food were introduced, aiming to provide reference for mung bean research and application in the future under the theoretical framework of modern nutrition and food science.

Plant-based foods (PBFs) are considered healthy, especially, minimally processed whole foods, fruits, whole grains, and legumes while highly processed PBFs maybe less nutritious. Educating consumers on nurient quality will help to guide their choices. This study was aimed at estimating and predicting the nutrient quality of PBFs using their Nutri-Score and micronutrient content. The NHANES (2017–2020) data shows the output for foods consumed in the US and their nutrient composition based on a 24-h recall. Though the Nutri-Score label has been used to discriminate food quality, it still needs to be implemented in most countries. It computes mostly macronutrients with less consideration for micronutrients which also contributes to product quality. ML methods used in this study combine the Nutri-Score grade and micronutrient content in predicting food quality. The FNDDS data of PBFs for 2017–2020 were split into training (n = 300) and testing (n = 74) datasets. Eight ML models were used to predict the Nutri-Score and the Nutri-Score grade of PBFs. Random forest (RF) and light gradient boost model (LightGBM) performed best with accuracy and coefficient of determination (R2) scores of 0.88 and 0.96, respectively, while DT had the least scores in predicting the Nutri-Score grade (0.81) and Nutri-Score (0.93). These results suggest that ML can be effectively leveraged to predict PBFs quality.

Consumers are increasingly adopting plant-based diets because of environmental, health, and animal welfare concerns. Ideally, the cooking behavior of plant-based meat analogs should accurately mimic that of real meat products so consumers can easily adopt them. In the current study, we characterized the impact of different cooking procedures (pan frying, air frying, and oven baking) on the physicochemical properties of beef and plant-based patties. We examined the influence of cooking temperature and time on the appearance, texture, cooking loss, and shrinkage of the two kinds of product. Moreover, the thermal properties of the beef and plant-based burgers were characterized using thermogravimetric and differential scanning calorimetric analysis to provide insights in the key temperatures where molecular changes occurred during cooking. A significant difference was observed in the physicochemical attributes of beef and plant-based patties but cooking method did not have a major influence on their final properties. After cooking, the plant-based patties had a higher water holding capacity, exhibited less shrinkage, and were softer (lower hardness, cohesiveness, springiness, resilience, and chewiness) than beef patties. However, thermal analysis suggested they exhibited a quite similar mass loss during cooking. Our results demonstrate important differences between the cookability of beef and plant-based patties, which highlights the need for further research on the physiochemical basis of the properties of plant-based foods that more accurately simulate the behavior of real meat products.

Plant-based meat substitutes are products used to replace meat in the human diet. These products have developed from traditional whole-grain meat substitutes to products based on an advanced technology called 2nd generation meat substitutes. Increased market visibility of 2nd generation products raised questions about the products´ healthiness once they are classified by NOVA as ultra-processed, are allegedly high in salt and saturated fat, and might not be nutritionally equivalent to meat. To answer those queries, we evaluated the nutritional profile of the 3 generations of products available in the Brazilian market. Products were classified into one of three stages of technology as traditional meat substitutes, 1st generation meat substitutes, or 2nd generation meat substitutes. Their nutritional values, ingredient composition, and nutrient profile were analyzed and compared. Most of the products analyzed (169 in total) were classified as 1st generation meat substitutes (55.6%), while 2nd generation ones represented 16% of products. The 2nd generation of meat substitutes presented a higher amount of protein, sodium, saturated fat, and a greater number of additives than previous generation products. The future generation of meat substitutes should focus on reducing saturated fat content and the use of fewer additives.

The high demand for fresh-like characteristics of vegetables and fruits (V&F) boosts the industrial implementation of high hydrostatic pressure (HHP), due to its capability to simultaneously maintain original organoleptic characteristics and to achieve preservative effect of the food. However, there remains great challenges for assuring complete microbial inactivation only relying on individual HHP treatments, including pressure-resistant strains and regrowth of injured microbes during the storage process. Traditional HHP-assisted thermal processing may compromise the nutrition and functionalities due to accelerated chemical kinetics under high pressure conditions. This work summarizes the recent advances in HHP-based combination strategies for microbial safety, as exemplified by several emerging non-thermally combined patterns with high inactivation efficiencies. Considerations and requirements about future process design and development of HHP-based combination technologies are also given.

Inflammatory bowel disease is a chronic and recurring inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract encompassing ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. Although the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease remains to be fully elucidated, environmental factors such as diet are believed to play a pivotal role in the onset and management of inflammatory bowel disease. Diet is thought to play an essential role in intestinal inflammation due to its regulatory effects on the microbiota, gut immune system, and epithelial barrier function. Although the evidence remains insufficient to draw firm conclusions on the role of specific dietary components in gastrointestinal diseases, studies have suggested that a Western diet with high intakes of total fats, omega-6 fatty acids, and meat have been associated with intestinal inflammation and relapse of inflammatory bowel disease. In contrast to a Western diet, plant-based diets often result in a reduced intake of total fats and meats and an increased intake of plant fibers which may contribute to reduced intestinal inflammation. This review critically examines the influence of plant-based dietary components on the clinical disease course of inflammatory bowel disease. Furthermore, this review discusses the benefits and possible limitations of plant-derived dietary components in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease while addressing the principal type of disease and the anatomic site of inflammation within the gastrointestinal tract. Finally, this review points out important directions for future research on the role of diet in inflammatory bowel disease. A better understanding of the role of diet and intestinal inflammation may pave the way for novel dietary interventions and specific foods- or food supplements, which can support the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease.

The associations among maternal diet, birth weight, and gestational weight gain are still inconclusive. This study aimed to investigate the associations between maternal dietary patterns and birth weight, and further explore whether GWG mediates these associations. A total of 3,334 pregnant women who completed a validated semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire from the Tongji Maternal and Child Health Cohort were included. Dietary patterns were extracted by using principal component analysis. Regression models and mediation analyses were performed to explore the associations between dietary patterns and birth weight and the effects of GWG on these associations. Five dietary patterns were identified: “Beans-vegetables,” “Fish-meat-eggs,” “Nuts-whole grains,” “Organ-poultry-seafood” and “Rice-wheat-fruits.” Only women following the “Beans-vegetables” pattern had heavier newborns (β = 47.39; 95% CI: 12.25, 82.54). Women following the “Beans-vegetables” pattern had significantly lower GWG (β = −0.7; 95% CI: −1.15, −0.25) and had a 16% lower risk of excessive GWG and 11% higher odd of adequate GWG. The association between the “Beans-vegetables” pattern and birth weight was negatively mediated by GWG. A dietary pattern enriched in beans and vegetables is beneficial for effectively controlling GWG and increasing birth weight. GWG serves.Clinical Trial Registry: This trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03099837).

Intestinal immune tolerance is maintained through the interplay between commensal microbiota, immune cells and epithelium. Constitutive intestinal epithelial-secreted interleukin (IL)-7 facilitates the proliferation and thus maintenance of gamma-delta T lymphocytes, which preserves intestinal mucosal immune surveillance. Since IL-7 is essential for maintaining intestinal health, we hypothesised that microbiota-derived components influenced by dietary kiwifruit support the intestinal IL-7 expression. In vitro gastro-ileal digestion and colonic fermentation of gold and green kiwifruit generated soluble bacteria-free fermenta, notably bacterial DNA that modulated basal and interferon gamma-stimulated IL-7 secretion in HT-29 cells. Epithelial IL-7 secretion correlated positively with total bacterial DNA, and the DNA originated from bifidobacteria, which are known to contain immunostimulatory CpG motifs. These findings demonstrate the involvement of microbiota DNA in promoting IL-7 secretion in the intestinal epithelium and contribute to unravelling a mechanism by which kiwifruit serve to maintain intestinal immune homeostasis.