The Antioxidant Potential of Fermented Foods: Challenges and Future Trends

The major role of antioxidant compounds in preserving food shelf-life and 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 in food antioxidant activity in vitro, which could potentially reflect 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 antioxidant bioavailability and bioaccessibility, and their efficacy during in vivo digestion is an area that still needs exploring.

In this framework, this Special Issue is aimed at covering the most recent advances in the use of fermentation as a means to enhance food antioxidant potential.