Polyphenols applications in food industry sector

Dietary polyphenols are natural compounds present in plants, including foods, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, tea, coffee, olive oil, wine, and beverages. They are known for several properties, such as antioxidant, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory activities (Puupponen-Pimi€a et al., 2002), and help to reduce the risk of metabolic disorders, including obesity, cardiovascular diseases, type-2 diabetes, and some types of cancer. Recently, polyphenols have been classified as a new type of “prebiotics,” meaning that they have an important role in stimulating the growth and the functional properties of probiotics (Gibson et al., 2017). Therefore they can promote the good health status of microbiome, and protect the body and the brain against some disorders related to age. The rising interest of consumers in the direct connection between diet, good health, and the prevention of diseases led to increased attention about the presence in one’s own diet of high-quality foodstuffs rich in polyphenols. This is seen by the food and pharmaceutical industry as a strategic opportunity to place products on the market that are increasingly differentiated and with an increasingly peculiar specificity of action. Precisely for this reason, the aforementioned industries not only use fruit and vegetables to recover polyphenols but also study and develop methodologies aiming at obtaining large quantities of polyphenols even from the so-called waste products, which can be from normally produced products, edible parts from the plant or fruit, and food products that have exhausted their “shelf life.” These byproducts still are very rich in nutritional, healthy, and biotechnologically important molecules.