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This book examines the role of fermented foods on human gut health and offers a unique contribution to this rapidly growing area of study. Fermented foods have been consumed by humans for millennia. This method of food preservation provided early humans with beneficial bacteria that re-populated the gut microbiota upon consumption. However, novel methods of production and conservation of food have led to severed ties between the food that modern humans consume and the gut microbiota. As a consequence, there has been a documented increase in the prevalence of autoimmune diseases and obesity, which has been correlated to decreased diversity of gut microbes, while infectious disorders have decreased in the three past decades.With the intention of providing a thorough overview of the relationship between fermented foods, nutrition, and health, the editors have grouped the chapters into three thematic sections: food and their associated microbes, the oral microbiome, and the gut microbiome. After an introduction dedicated to the environmental microbiome, Part I provides an overview of what is currently known about the microbes associated with different foods, and compares traditional forms of food preparation with current industrial techniques in terms of the potential loss of microbial diversity. The chapters in Part 2 explore the oral microbiota as a microbial gatekeeper and main contributor to the gut microbiota. Part 3 introduces beneficial modulators of the gut microbiome starting with the establishment of a healthy gut microbiota during infancy, and continuing with the role of probiotics and prebiotics in health preservation and the imbalances of the gut microbiota. In the final section the editors offer concluding remarks and provide a view of the future brought by the microbiome research revolution.This study is unique in its emphasis on the convergence of two very relevant fields of research: the field of studies on Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) and fermented foods, and microbiome research. The relationship between these fields, as presented by the research in this volume, demonstrates the intimate connection between fermented foods, the oral and gut microbiota, and human health. Although research has been done on the impact of diet on the gut microbiome there are no publications addressing the restorative role of food as microbe provider to the gut microbiota. This novel approach makes the edited volume a key resource for scientific researchers working in this field.

The volume reviews different types of bioactive components associated with food fermentation and their impact on human health. The diversity of microorganism responsible for the production of different types of fermented foods and beverages includes bacteria, yeasts, and fungi. Biotransformation of food constituent by microorganisms occurs during fermentation processes for the production of fermented food and in the gastrointestinal tract by gut microorganisms. This biotransformation results in production of specific bioactive compounds that are responsible for a wide range of health benefits. The bioactive compounds discussed in this book includes polyphenols, bioactive peptides, fibrinolytic enzymes, gama-amino butyric acids (GABA) exopolysaccharides, probiotic, prebiotic, symbiotic and antinutritional factors. These bioactive compounds are responsible for health benefits such as antioxidant, antihypertension, antimicrobial, cholesterol lowering, anticancer, obesity and antithrombotic properties. Advanced research in the field of food fermentation and their health benefits have resulted in commercialization of some of the fermented foods as functional foods. The traditional fermented foods consumed in different parts of the world and their health benefits are discussed in detail and the book concludes with recent advances in microbial transformation during gut fermentation and their impact on human health. There has been increasing interest among researchers on the proposed title in the last decade and the book brings updated information on research and advances in different types of health benefits exhibited by bioactive compounds in a wide range of fermented foods.

This book focuses exclusively on the beneficial effects of microbes in food. The section on traditional and modern fermented foods covers the role of microbes and their diversity in fermented foods, interaction between the different microflora present in fermented food products, development of starter cultures to improve the nutritional and sensory quality of fermented foods, and factors and processes affecting the safety of various fermented foods. The second section focuses on microbes in and as functional foods: probiotics, prebiotics and synbiotics.

The approach to study microorganisms in food has changed. In the last few years the field of food fermentations has experienced a very fast development, thanks to the application of methods allowing precise picturing of their microbial ecology. As a consequence, new information is available on the structure and dynamics of the microbial populations taking turns during fermented food production. This is the age when functional genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics are going to shed light on the overall role of bacteria in food ferm- tation, considering also their interactions. Nevertheless, the last 10 years can be considered the “detectomics” era, since much research effort has been dedicated to the development and optimization of biomolecular methods for the detection, reliable identification and monitoring of microorganisms involved in food fermentations. The identification of species and strains during the different phases of fermented foods production allows the understanding of the time when they act or play a role in the food matrix, and the molecular methods can, thus, be used for this purpose in a sort of functional diagnostics. It is well recognized by researchers world-wide that traditional microbiological methods often fail to characterize minor populations or microorganisms for which a selective enrichment is necessary. Moreover, stressed and injured cells need specific culturing conditions to recover and become cultivable on agar media.