4 - Detoxification properties of microorganisms in foods

Abstract

Nowadays, a relation between dietary habits and incidence of different cancers has been proved. Therefore, production of safe foods has become a priority in food industry. Nevertheless, foodstuffs can be either contaminated during the process or prepared from contaminated raw materials which can have adverse effects on health over time. Environmental contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides, and mycotoxins can be released into water and food production chain as well as formation of unwanted harmful chemical compounds such as heterocyclic aromatic amines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, acrylamide, and nitrosamines during processing, which result in various adverse health effects and chronic toxicity especially cancer. Although applying good agricultural practices, avoiding use of pesticides in agricultural products, monitoring storage condition of raw materials, control of conditions in processing of foods have been recommended as preventive ways of toxicants generation, alternative detoxification approaches using microorganisms such as probiotics, lactic acid bacteria, and yeasts have been investigated extensively. Although the exact mechanism of action of microorganisms is not elucidated yet, but binding/absorption of carcinogens by cell surfaces and peptidoglycans has been proposed as the most possible one. Moreover, it has been reported that some microorganisms have the ability of degrading certain pesticides through intracellular enzymes. Different factors affect the binding capacity of microorganisms including strain type, growth phase and incubation time, toxin concentration, chemical structure of toxin, medium type, pH, and ion strength. To sum up, utilization of microorganisms as detoxification tools opens up a new prospect of reducing the bioavailability of food toxins.