The role of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in food, medicine, and agriculture is gaining significant attention. This comprehensive review delves into the biosynthetic pathways, regulatory and bioactivity profiles, and prospects of VOCs, encompassing a spectrum from volatile terpenoids to phenolics, aldehydes, ketones, and acids. We commence with an exploration of the diverse biosynthetic routes of VOCs, focusing on the methylerythritol phosphate, mevalonate, and phenylpropanoid pathways and elucidating the key enzymes and intermediates. Subsequently, we examine the bioactivity of VOCs, highlighting their antibacterial, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antioxidative, anthelmintic, and anti-mood disorder properties, and discuss their potential applications in the food, medicinal, and agricultural fields. This review highlights the need for future studies to focus on regulating the biosynthesis of VOCs, unraveling their bioactivity, and developing efficient synthetic and extraction methods to enable sustainable advancements in related fields.

Salt is one of the most common condiments in our daily life, and its major ingredient, sodium chloride, is an indispensable substance for the human body. Salt can improve food flavor and texture and prolong the shelf life of foods. However, excessive intake of salt will increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases such as high blood pressure and coronary heart disease. This paper reviews the methods used for salt reduction in foods without affecting the flavor quality of foods, such as substitution with non-sodium salts, addition of natural extracts or salty peptides, multi-sensory synergy to enhance salty taste perception, salt crystal structure optimization and food texture recombination. The basic principles, characteristics and research progress of various salt reduction methods are described in detail. The aim of this review is to provide a scientific basis and theoretical reference for in-depth studies on methods and strategies for salt reduction in foods.

Retronasal aroma perception, an important sensory experience during food oral processing, has a significant impact on the consumers’ sensory enjoyment, acceptability and behavioral characteristics. This work reviews the effects of genetic variations and dietary cultural differences on aroma recognition and perception, the effects of fundamental food properties and physiological parameters of oral processing on retronasal aroma perception during food oral processing, and the important roles of nasal airflow and nasal physiology in aroma diffusion from the oral to retronasal cavity, and it also summarizes the analytical methods for retronasal aroma detection and dynamic sensory evaluation of aroma perception. There are cross-modal interactions between retronasal aroma perception and multiple senses including taste and oral texture perceptions. Therefore, clarifying the mechanisms of retronasal aroma perception has great significance for food formulation design and targeted modulation of flavor perception during food oral processing.

Bitter compounds widely exist in foods and have an important impact on food flavor. The major bitter compounds in foods include amino acids, peptides, polyphenols, alkaloids, and inorganic salts. Bitterness is perceived through binding between bitter compounds and the specific sites of the 25 human bitter taste receptors (hTAS2Rs), which further activates the downstream signal pathway mediated by G protein, converting chemical signals into electrical signals and transmitting them to the brain. Some foods with strong bitterness taste are not well accepted by consumers, so appropriately reducing bitterness in foods can improve consumers’ preference. At present, there are two main methods to reduce the perception of food bitterness: 1) masking bitterness by polymerization/complexation or flavor interaction, and 2) removing bitterness by reducing the content of bitter compounds or changing their structure. In this paper, the bitter compounds in foods, the analytical methods for them, the mechanism of bitterness perception and the methods used to reduce bitterness perception are reviewed in an effort to provide theoretical guidance for food bitterness regulation.

To investigate the mechanism of action of umami-enhancing peptides, molecular simulation and sensory evaluation were employed to analyze the umami-enhancing effects of three peptides derived from chicken: LPLQD, DGGRYY, and DEAGPSIVH, the molecular mechanism of umami-enhancing peptide-glutamic acid-taste receptor interaction and the dynamic binding process. The results indicated that all three umami-enhancing peptides exhibited good water solubility and non-toxicity and had an additive effect on the umami taste of 0.35% glutamic acid solution. Molecular docking results revealed that the presence of umami-enhancing peptides greatly enhanced the interactions between the ligand system and the taste receptor type 1 (T1R1) including electrostatic interaction, hydrophobic interaction, and hydrogen bonding interaction, thereby leading to enhanced binding stability. Furthermore, molecular dynamic simulations disclosed that the venus flytrap (VFT) domain in the T1R1 receptors was relatively stable, while the cysteine-rich domain exhibited significant spatial fluctuations. Statistics of hydrogen bonds indicated that the addition of umami-enhancing peptides to the ligand system enhanced the hydrogen bonding interaction and consequently binding intensity between ligands and receptors. By analyzing the frontier molecular orbitals, serine, tyrosine, glutamine, arginine, and histidine residues were identified as active sites in the peptides that contributed to the binding with T1R1. The above results provide theoretical support for understanding the umami-enhancing mechanism of peptides and for the development of new umami enhancers.

Natural edible spices not only provide unique flavor quality to foods, but also have significant potential in promoting human health and disease prevention due to their bioactive components. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the major functional activities of natural edible spices, including promoting digestion, controlling blood glucose, lowering cholesterol, enhancing immunity, and antimicrobial activity. It discusses the potential roles of bioactive components such as phenolics, terpenes, carotenoids, and flavonoids in the prevention and treatment of various diseases. Additionally, this article discusses the application of natural edible spices in the food and healthcare industries and summarizes the extraction and analytical techniques used for identifying their active components through. Finally, it highlights the current research challenges and future directions, such as in-depth insights into the mechanism of action of bioactive substances in natural edible spices, development of novel natural spices, and safety assessment of long-term consumption. As research on natural edible spices has progressed, they are expected to play an increasingly important role in promoting public health and driving innovation in the food industry.

Globally, hyperuricemia is a growing health, social, and economic problem which could cause gout, chronic kidney diseases and other diseases. There are increasing evidences that a sensible diet makes sense to reduce the risk of hyperuricemia. This review aims to explore the metabolic mechanism of dietary factors and effects of dietary types associated with hyperuricemia. Recommendations for dietary modification to prevent hyperuricemia are as following: decreasing intake of animal organs, seafood, sugar-sweetened, and alcohol beverages is essential; choosing water or unsweetened tea and coffee instead of sweetened beverages is beneficial; and increasing intake of vegetables, reduced-fat dairy products, foods containing fiber, micronutrients and unsaturated fatty acids is helpful. In addition, consumption of fruits and legumes in moderation is advantageous, and low-fructose of fruits and low-purine of non-soy beans are recommended. Moreover, personalized diet needs to be emphasized for hyperuricemic patients accompanied with diverse metabolic diseases.

In order to study the aroma-active components of pungent spices and to promote the standardization of their processing and application, this work used solvent-assisted flavor evaporation (SAFE) combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry/olfactometry (GC-MS/O) to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the aroma-active components of 20 pungent spices. Using olfactory analysis, a total of 203 aroma-active compounds with flavor dilution (FD) values ≥ 9 were identified mainly consisting of alcohols, sulfur compounds, olefins, esters, ketones, aldehydes, phenols and acids, and the concentrations of aromaactive compounds varied between different spices. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that all samples could be well classified into three groups. The aroma-active compounds of garlic, Welsh onion, chive and onion were dominated by sulfur compounds, while the aroma-active components of the other pungent spices were dominated by olefins, alcohols, phenols and ketones. Aroma-active sulfur-containing compounds were detected in garlic at the highest level of 3484777.68 μg/kg, including disulphide and trisulphide, contributing to the characteristic flavor of Allium plants. The highest content of aromaactive olefinic compounds of 72847224.14 μg/kg was detected in ginger, and the major aroma-active components of ginger were α-gingerene and β-sesquiterpene. Alcohols and ketones were detected in wild mint at high levels of 284886.09 and 196167.66 μg/kg, respectively, and the characteristic aroma components of wild mint were menthol and carvone. Aromaactive aldehydes were detected in litsea at high levels of 469242.68 μg/kg. The major aroma-active components detected in litsea were citral and citronellal. This study provides a theoretical basis for the deep processing of pungent spices.

The present study reports the structural characteristics of 3 polysaccharide fractions (SPS-F1, SPS- F2 and SPS-F3) isolated and purified from squash. SPS-F1 (molecular weight (Mw) = 12.30 kDa) and SPS-F2 (Mw = 19.40 kDa) were likely to contain HG and RG-I domain of pectic polysaccharide, respectively. SPS-F2 (Mw = 270.4 kDa) was mainly composed of rhamnose, galactose and arabinose. The treatment with SPS decreased body weight gain, glucose and TG levels in type 2 diabetes rats. Besides, 25 differential metabolites were identified based on urinary metabolomics analysis, which are crucial to the anti-diabetic effect of SPS. The regulation of nicotinamide N-oxide, histamine, cis-aconitate, citrate, L-malic acid, 3-(3-hydroxyphenyl) propanoic acid and N-acetyl-L-aspartic acid were mainly associated with energy metabolism, gut microbiota and inflammation. Study of surface plasmon resonance revealed the binding kinetics with galectin-3 (Gal-3) and fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2). The K_D values of SPS-F2 and SPS-F3 to Gal-3 were 4.97 × 10^-3 and 1.48 × 10^-3 mol/L, indicating a weak binding affinity. All 3 fractions showed moderate binding to FGF2 and the affinity was SPS-F3 > SPS-F2 > SPS-F1. Thus, the metabolomics and SPR approach were proved to be a promising tool in exploring the anti-diabetes effects of SPS and provided a deep understanding of the mechanisms.