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Chapter 1
Introduction: Metabolic-Driven Ecological Rationale to Advance Biotechnological Approaches for Functional Foods
Kalidas Shetty and Dipayan Sarkar
Improved global food systems for advancing food security and human health must also address the challenges to sustainable solutions to the most critical ecological problems we face from climate change and the essential need to lower the carbon footprint of food production. Global food security challenges now face the double burden of undernourishment and excess of calories (from hyper-processed macronutrients with a deficiency in micronutrients). In addition, the burden of excess calories is leading to a rapid increase in non-communicable chronic diseases (NCD), such as type 2 diabetes and its complications, in every region of the world. Solutions to these challenges require that we harness the benefits of more climate-resilient food diversity in the overall food system and across all the diverse ecologies of the world in order to improve the health-related quality of food systems and their ability to counter NCDs (Sarkar and Shetty, 2014a, b; Shetty and McCue, 2003). In order to harness the health benefits of diverse foods for better health through functional foods, metabolic innovations grounded in sound ecological, metabolic, and cellular biochemistry using a systemic rationale must be the basis of value-added food innovations. In using a systemic rationale, the critical control points of overall metabolic control points both at the food system end and at the level of host response must be addressed (Shetty, 2014; Shetty and Wahlqvist, 2004). Functional Foods and Biotechnology comprises two interrelated books, building on the foundations of an earlier book, Food Biotechnology, published in 2006, but takes a more ecologically driven metabolic approach in exploring a wider diversity of foods beyond the basic macronutrients, integrating a more diverse array of food crops and other non-plant food matrixes to provide functional components with potential health benefits.
Overall, Functional Foods and Biotechnology, which kicks off the new âFood Biotechnologyâ series, is divided into two interrelated books. The first book, Functional Foods and Biotechnology: Sources of Functional Foods, is focused on sources of novel functional bioactives and functional food ingredients, and also includes a chapter on regulatory issues (Theme 1), while the second book, Functional Foods and Biotechnology: Biotransformation and Analysis of Functional Foods and Ingredients, is focused on (i) exploring how these functional compounds and bioactives in food systems can be modulated and bio-transformed by metabolic, enzymatic, and cellular tools to enrich overall levels or to induce them to relevant levels by stress-induced regulation (Theme 2), and (ii) examples of analytical tools and approaches for understanding host responses in the design of functional foods and associated bioactive-rich functional ingredients (Theme 3).
The rationale and concepts presented in these first two interrelated books in the series are well-aligned to challenges at the global level, where there is a rapid emergence of diet-linked chronic diseases that represent a new reality of food security (Shetty, 2014). This recent global increase in diet-linked NCDs is resulting in a heavy burden on long-term health care management and overall costs in aging societies as well as demographically younger emerging countries, thus consuming higher levels of national health care budgets (Shetty, 2014). Overall, the burden of NCDs involves series of progressive metabolic malfunctions that manifest themselves by enhancing oxidative stress (i.e., respiration-driven oxygen function breakdown associated with energy needs) at the organ and cellular levels. Functional food-based diets designed for the management of respiration-driven oxidative stress and optimum metabolic energy needs will be an important part of the overall solution for combating NCDs. Therefore, the most cost-effective strategy of metabolic innovations for NCDs is the improved design of food crops and non-crop foods based on agroecological diversity and enhanced redox-linked bioactive components (i.e., respiration-driven oxygen stress protecting compounds), which can modulate and prevent oxidative stress and thus mitigate energy-optimized functional impacts on NCDs (Shetty, 2014). Such food design must contain a balance of both macronutrients and micronutrients as ingredients, including bioactive compounds that can counter the oxidation-linked malfunctions of NCDs. Such bioactive-enriched foods are also essential to advancing community-wide nutrition and health, while also increasing the agroecological diversity (i.e., plant biodiversity) of local food crops. All of these efforts greatly benefit global ecology, where climate resilience will be the most important challenge to managing an improved health-driven foundation of the overall food system that also can support the economic systems of diverse communities in different ecologies that are facing the burdens of climate change (Shetty, 2014).
Based on the previously discussed rationale and understanding, the current global food and nutritional security model must be improved to generate adequate global food production from a wide diversity of crops in diverse ecologies that will meet macro-/micronutrient needs along with phytonutrients (e.g., phenolic antioxidants as one example) to counter obesity-linked NCDs (Shetty, 2014). The NCD epidemic represents a large financial burden on health care systems worldwide, a burden that has been increasing in recent years in both developed aging societies and emerging young countries with rapidly growing economies. The current economic and production practices favor highly processed carbohydrate-enriched foods and are dependent on a narrow selection of major cereal crops such as rice and wheat, with corn for animal foods (Shetty, 2014). These cereal crops are less resilient and robust in responding to and dealing with climate change extremes because they are bred for yields rather inducible responses to abiotic stress (e.g., salinity, drought, and temperature). In addition, global food security currently is dependent on petroleum fossil fuel-based nitrogen, which contributes to the unsustainable addition of nitrogen wastes that affect ecology and human health, especially along water bodies that link global river systems to oceans (Shetty, 2014). Globally, nitrogen in the soil has more than doubled in the last 100 years. Excess nitrogen is a third ecological dimension tp the food cycle that further worsens increasing carbon emissions and rapidly degrades water quality, further burdening human health in terms of, for example, vascular hemoglobin function and global ecology (e.g., worsening algal blooms and associated toxins) (Shetty, 2014).
Overall, the lack of food diversity from an unsustainable ecology that is focused on restricted food crop choices and animal foods and excess fertilizer application, coupled with high consumption of hyper-processed carbohydrates and lipids without micronutrients and oxygen stress protecting phytonutrients, is contributing to the global increase in obesity-linked NCDs. Solutions to the above challenges require integrated, systems-based strategies that use nutrition and functional food-based food security for the betterment of human and animal health and for an improved and sustainable agroecology that is based on crop and food diversity, and also on promoting diverse ethnic food concepts that are built from all human experiences (Shetty, 2014; Shetty and Sarkar, 2018).
Integrated systems-based platforms are needed to advance strategies and innovations across all areas of life sciences. Such integration will extend into global food security challenges, where systems strategies will be used to assist in the development of biologically based solutions in a post-genome era (Shetty, 2014; Sarkar and Shetty, 2014b). The calorie model of limited agricultural commodities is incomplete and must be improved, as increased calorie density from highly processed foods does not account for the variability in respiration-driven oxygen function responsible for cellular energy generation from foods. Food components must not only provide basic macro-/micronutrients, but also counter oxygen malfunction through compounds such as phenolic phytochemicals (i.e., oxygen stress modulation) and diverse sources of fibers that support the beneficial microbiome and that are removed during food processing.
From this systems-based foundation of redox-balancing foods, crop and animal metabolic innovations based on an ecological rationale must emerge (Shetty and Wahlqvist, 2004; Shetty, 2014; Sarkar and Shetty, 2014b). This approach has the potential benefits of addressing both food processing and, in particular, primary agricultural production challenges, and of improving their resilience to climate change. These integrated systems must be part of the overall solutions to more resilient and multi-purpose agricultural systems and to supporting ecologically diverse ethnic foods that better address global food security through crop and food diversity models, both for a more resilient climate-adapting ecological sustainability and for an improved approach to addressing the challenges facing human health (Shetty and Sarkar, 2018).
Crops and foods for health-targeted design and development and related food-processing technologies must develop agricultural systems for climate change resilience and robustness, using both dual function bioactive food crops and animal models based on redox biology (i.e., respiration-driven oxygen stress balance in cells), in which oxygen stress-protecting bioactives for health can also provide crop production resilience in response to climate change, and bioactives that support a beneficial microbiome that further enhances overall health and resilience.
Using concepts founded in redox biology, microbiome-supporting bioactives, and fermentation biology, we can develop health-relevant phytochemicals in crop food systems at pre-harvest and post-harvest stages for a range of chronic diseases, including obesity-related and environmental breakdown-linked diseases (Sarkar and Shetty, 2014a). These redox-linked metabolic innovations and research strategies will be recruited to add value to diverse global crop food systems in order to enhance value-added benefits. Further value-added food diversity can be harnessed to address major public health challenges within ethnic communities across the world (Shetty and Sarkar, 2018).
Followng on from the background to the realities that challenge global food security-linked health with the rapid emergence of climate change, the rationale for this introductory chapter is to provide the perspective and focus of the first two books in this new series on metabolic-driven ecological rationale to advance biotechnological approaches for functional foods. Based on the emerging need to advance deeper ecological rationale with foundations in metabolic approaches, Functional Foods and Biotechnology has been divided into two interrelated books emphasizing three thematic areas: The first book deals with sources of functional foods and ingredients (Theme 1), while the second book has two themes, the biotransformation of functional food and ingredients (Theme 2) and the analysis of functional foods and ingredients (Theme 3) (Figure 1.1). To advance the conceptual ecological rationale of the two books, this second edition provides good examples of a way forward in how we can use strong ecological rationale for metabolic-driven foundations to build effective biotechnology strategies for the development of functional foods and ingredients.
Figure 1.1 Schematic diagram of the three thematic areas covered by Functional Foods and Biotechnology: Sources of Functional Food and Functional Foods and Biotechnology: Biotransformation and Analysis of Function Foods and Ingredients: (1) sources of functional foods and ingredients, (2) biotransformation of functional foods and ingredients, and (3) analysis of functional foods and ingredients.
In this first book, this introductory chapter is followed by a chapter on regulatory issues (Lutz) that outlines the science behind and current regulation of the substantiation of health claims in functional foods. Following that, ten chapters focus on bioactive ingredients for food supplements and functional foods arising from different plant sources, including corn (Ranilla), ancient emmer wheat (Christopher et al.), barley (Ramakrishna et al.), black soybean (Yamashita et al.), fava bean (Shetty et al.), and herbs in the Lamiaceae family (Mishra et al.) and the Lemnaceae family (Rale et al.). Other common sources for-value added ingredients are then discussed, including xylooligosaccharides (Krishnan et al.), non-nutritive sweeteners (Randhir and Shetty), and finally carotenoprotein from seafood waste (Chakrabarti), providing perspectives on widening the search for sources of functional foods and ingredients.
In the second book, Section 1 (Theme 2) details the biotransformation of functional foods and ingredients, beginning with a chapter on the metabolic modulation of abiotic stress response for improvement of functional ingredients in food plants by Sarkar and Shetty, which provides a novel and innovative integration of metabolically driven abiotic stress response modulation to optimize functional bioactives for functional foods. This has important relevance in building climate-resilient food systems that also address public health challenges such as NCD and improved food safety. The chapters by Deo et al., Dey and Ray, and Agustinah et al. provide excellent examples of using targeted beneficial bacteria such as lactic acid bacteria to improve functional foods and ingredients. Furthermore, the volume also captures examples of how traditional fermentations from the Indian subcontinent (Kavitake et al.), Africa (Banwo et al.), and the Mediterranean region (Kotzekidou) have relevance in applications for developing functional foods and ingredients. Additionally this section includes novel perspectives and insights with the chapters âTequila: Biotechnology of Microbial Flavorsâ by Neira-Vielma and Aguirre-Joya, âTechnologies Used for Microbial Production of Food Ingredientsâ (Ercan-Oruc et al.), âBiotechnology of Microbial Flavorsâ (Vong and Liu), âPhospholipase D Inhibition by Hexanal and Its Applications in Enhancing Shelf Life and Quality of Fruits, Vegetables, and Flowersâ (Padmanabhan and Paliyath), âProduction and Recovery of Enzymes for Functional Food Processingâ (SepĂșlveda et al.), âEnzymatic Bioprocessing of Tropical Seafood Wastes to Functional Foodsâ (Chakrabarti) and âEgg Yolk Antibodies Farming for Passive Immunotherapyâ (Majumder et al.). All of these chapters provide novel and innovative strategies for metabolically driven biotransformation approaches to the development of functional food and ingredients in diverse food matrixes. Ecologically driven processes have a long history of use and in many cases use of traditional fermentations and improvement of such culturally relevant strategies.
In Section 2 (Theme 3) of Functional Foods and Biotechnology: Biotransformation and Analysis of Functional Foods and Ingredients, the chapter by Hepsiba et al. focuses on cell and cell based models to screen the health promoting properties of dietary components. The chapters by Qin et al. and Murthy et al., âBiological Functions and Health Benefits of Food Polyphenolsâ and âPlant Phytochemicals for Cancer Chemoprevention: Applications and Advantages,â respectively, focus on cancer chemoprevention models. The chapter âBeneficial Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) Based Biotransformation of Plant and Dairy Substrates to Enhance Type 2 Diabetes Relevant Health Benefitsâ (Sarkar et al.) shows examples of in vitro enzyme inhibition assay models relevant to early stages of type 2 diabetes and its complications. The chapter by Panchal et al., âThe Potential Roles and Implications of Microbiota on Maternal and Child Health,â provides overall insights on how microbiome-rich foods are important for maternal and child health. Another important area of functional analysis for food applications is innovations in antimicrobial solutions, an area that is explored in the chapters âGenetic Characterization of Antimicrobial Peptidesâ...
