Aug 2026· Food Chemistry: X· Vol 38, pp. 104292· 0 citations· 80 references
Medicine
Abstract
Eggs are predominantly consumed as basic food ingredients, with limited application in value-added products. Lactic acid bacteria fermentation offers a promising strategy to transform egg matrices into functional food ingredients. This review provides a comprehensive and critical overview of how LAB drives substrate consumption—including proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates—generates bioactive metabolites such as organic acids, flavor compounds, and free amino acids, and induces structural rearrangements in egg proteins at both macroscopic and molecular levels. These changes collectively improve functional properties including solubility, texture, rheology, emulsifying capacity, and foaming stability via mechanisms involving proteolysis, pH-driven aggregation, and redox balance. Importantly, fermentation outcomes are highly condition-dependent—the direction and extent of changes depend on substrate composition, protein concentration, pH, and strain selection. By integrating substrate transformations, structural modifications, and functional outcomes into a unified framework, this review provides mechanistic insights for developing LAB-fermented egg products with enhanced quality and health-promoting potential.
Amaranth, a nutritionally dense pseudocereal, is an exceptional substrate for producing functional and metabiotic food products via lactic acid fermentation. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of both ungerminated and germinated amaranth seeds as fermentation matrices, assigning their nutritional profiles, bioactive constituents, and compatibility with microbial transformation. Central to this discussion are the synergistic interactions between amaranth’s native compounds and lactic acid bacteria (LAB), with an emphasis on four key bioconversion mechanisms: protein hydrolysis, polyphenol activation, antinutrient reduction, and the biosynthesis of functional and metabiotic metabolites. Essential fermentation parameters, including substrate preparation, inoculation strategies, pH, temperature, and fermentation time, are systematically reviewed to guide optimization of bioactive compound yields. Post-fermentation processing approaches, such as freeze-drying, controlled drying, and product standardization, are assessed for their capacity to preserve product stability and ensure consistent functional performance. The review further explores the incorporation of fermented amaranth into diverse food systems, such as gluten-free bakery goods, functional beverages, and nutraceutical formulations, as well as its application in animal nutrition, where it supports improved digestibility and gut microbiome health. The review concludes by mapping current challenges, unresolved knowledge gaps, and priority research directions, positioning fermented amaranth systems as versatile, science-backed platforms for developing next-generation functional and metabiotic ingredients.
Aida Mihaela Vasile, Marina Pihurov Procop, M. Cotărleţ et al.· Foods· 1 citation
Probiotics have considerable potential in regulating gut microbiota, improving metabolic health, and enhancing host immunity. However, during food processing, storage, and gastrointestinal digestion, they are susceptible to stresses including heat, acidity, oxygen exposure, moisture changes, and digestive fluids, leading to reduced viable cell counts and impaired functionality. Developing delivery systems that integrate protective capacity, processing adaptability, and food compatibility is, therefore, an important direction for advancing probiotic applications in foods. Food proteins possess favorable nutritional properties, biocompatibility, and structural design flexibility. They can undergo self-assembly driven by non-covalent interactions and further co-assemble with second components such as polysaccharides and polyphenols, thereby forming diverse delivery materials. Starting from protein assembly behavior, this review summarizes representative formation pathways of protein-based probiotic delivery materials and clarifies how different pathways lead to delivery structures, such as nanoparticles, nanogels, hydrogels, nanofibrils, microcapsule shells, nanocoatings, and nanofibers. On this basis, the three major functional roles of protein materials in probiotic delivery systems are summarized, namely, encapsulation, scaffold construction, and interfacial regulation. Their adaptability to different food matrices in food applications and the safety issues requiring attention are further discussed. This review aims to clarify the structural evolution of protein-based probiotic delivery systems from the origin of material formation, providing a reference for their structure-guided design, processing-pathway optimization, and expanded food applications.
Jinghang Zhang, Hai-Fu Jia, Xiyuan Zhang et al.· Comprehensive Reviews in Foo...· 0 citations
Cereal and pseudo-cereal based fermented food products represent a substantial segment of global diet, nutrition as well as food security. Fermentation, especially by Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) increases the nutritional and functional values of foods by increasing palatability, bioavailability and minimizing antinutritional factors. LAB plays a pivotal role in synthesizing bioactive peptides, vitamins, minerals and reducing anti-nutrients parallelly. This review elucidates the mechanism through which LAB revamping nutritional macromolecules, such as peptides and polysaccharides, during fermentation and their role in the development of traditional as well as modern fermented foods. Additionally, these fermented foods have been associated with several health benefits. Recent advancement in biotechnology such as genome sequencing, functional genomics, and AI-assisted bioinformatics, have significantly enhanced our understanding of the diversity of LAB, the metabolism, and adaptation mechanisms. The combination of in silico and experimental methods has enabled the development of novel food enzymes as well as highly precise fermentation processes. Together with new innovations, growing demands for quality, consistency, safety as well as health benefits point out the significance of continued research. More studies employing both conventional and modern methods are necessary to explore these food groups completely and achieve better food quality, increased nutrition, more health benefits and comprehensive socioeconomic advantages.
Adyasa Barik, Hui-Wen Lin, Chen-Che Hsieh et al.· International Journal of Bio...· 0 citations
Lactic acid bacteria are important probiotics widely found in nature and recognized for their health-promoting roles in fermented foods and their probiotic functions in the human gut. In recent years, postbiotics-defined as inanimate metabolites or components of probiotics-have gained increasing attention. Extracellular vesicles derived from lactic acid bacteria (LAB-EVs) represent a unique category of postbiotics with notable bioactivity and stability, holding broad potential for food applications. This review systematically examines the biogenesis, molecular composition, and dual applications of LAB-EVs in food and health. In food systems, LAB-EVs can serve as natural preservatives by inhibiting pathogens and biofilms, as fermentation modulators by mediating microbial interactions, and as efficient nanocarriers for delivering flavors and nutrients. Furthermore, LAB-EVs contribute to gut health by enhancing barrier function, modulating immune balance, and maintaining microbiota homeostasis. To bridge the gap between research and industrial application, this review highlights key strategies for enhancing EV yield, optimizing purification protocols, and enabling functional engineering. In summary, LAB-EVs constitute an advanced bioactive platform with significant potential for developing next-generation functional foods and promoting the innovative application of postbiotics in the food industry.
Ling Hu, Bo-Qing Yao, Bo-Ya Gao et al.· Critical reviews in food sci...· 0 citations
Lactic fermentation can restructure food matrices and modulate the molecular distribution of nutrients and bioactive compounds, thereby altering their technological and functional performance in complex food systems. In this study, Agaricus bisporus flour was used as a model mushroom matrix to investigate how fermentation-drive compositional remodeling influences the physicochemical and functional properties of gluten-free bread. Native and lactic-fermented mushroom flours were incorporated into a rice-corn-tapioca system, and their effects on dough expansion, crumb structure, nutritional composition, fatty acid profile, free sugar profiles, and antioxidant signatures assessed. Fermentation markedly altered the mushroom flour matrix, leading to reduced dough gas retention and denser crumb structures, consistent with microstructural modifications affecting viscoelastic behavior. More importantly, fermentation induced clear composition shifts, including redistribution of free sugars, modulation of fatty acid profiles, and increased α-tocopherol retention, indicating microbial metabolism-mediated molecular reorganization. These changes were directly associated with enhanced antioxidant capacity in the final breads, particularly in samples enriched with fermented flour. Multivariate analysis further confirmed that fermentation status, rather than incorporation level, was the main driver of variation across compositional and functional parameters, especially those related to lipid oxidation protection, sugar metabolism, and antioxidant potential. These findings demonstrate that lactic fermentation acts as a matrix-engineering strategy capable of redefining the structure-function role of A. bisporus flour in gluten-free bread, offering mechanistic insights into how fermented fungal ingredients can be leveraged to design nutritionally enhanced and functionally optimized cereal-free products.
Ana Saldanha, Mikel Añibarro-Ortega, Diogo Salvati et al.· Food Research International· 0 citations
The growing interest in lactic acid bacteria (LAB) within the baking sector is driven by their ability to improve both the technological performance and nutritional quality of bakery products. The purpose of this study was to provide a comprehensive overview of current knowledge regarding the use of conventional and unconventional LAB in breadmaking, with particular emphasis on their influence on dough properties, shelf life, sensory characteristics, nutritional value, stress tolerance, and sustainability and their interactions with unconventional yeast. The available evidence indicates that LAB contributes significantly to dough development through acidification, proteolytic activity, and exopolysaccharide production, leading to improvements in viscosity, elasticity, extensibility, water absorption, and gluten network formation. Their metabolic activity also promotes the production of organic acids, bacteriocins, and other antimicrobial compounds that help delay microbial spoilage and extend product shelf life. In addition, LAB fermentation enhances flavor and aroma complexity while increasing mineral bioavailability, vitamin content, and the formation of beneficial bioactive compounds. Attention has been given to the capacity of selected LAB strains to tolerate thermal, osmotic, acidic, and oxidative stress conditions, highlighting their suitability for industrial applications. Furthermore, combinations of LAB with unconventional yeast have shown potential for improving nutritional quality, sensory acceptance, texture, and shelf life and reducing the glycemic impact of bakery products. Overall, LAB represents a versatile group of microorganisms capable of supporting the development of innovative, high-quality, and more sustainable bakery products. The synthesis of current research highlights both the opportunities and challenges associated with their application and emphasizes the need for further studies focused on strain selection, fermentation optimization, and large-scale implementation.
Cristian Mititiuc, A. Dabija, Ionuț Avrămia· Applied Sciences· 0 citations
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