Food Metabolomics—An Overview

Abstract

Metabolomics is a systems biology tool useful in the study of the plurality of chemical processes involving intermediates and products of metabolism within an organism, cell or tissue. Food metabolomics can be defined as the application of metabolomics in food systems “from farm to human”. The application of metabolomics technologies has had a significant impact on food research and has further improved the sensitivity demanded by existing food quality/safety legislation. Metabolomics has also opened up new opportunities for biomarker food intake discovery and new metabolite biomarkers identified in body fluids following the consumption of various foods, ingredients, meals, or diets. In nutrition research, metabolomics also aims to understand the correlation between diet or food ingredients and their preventive or health-promoting effects. These exciting possibilities would not be possible in the absence of the huge advances in analytical technologies, including nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectrometry-based techniques. When coupled with chemometric methods and spectral databases for the statistical analysis and biological interpretation of complex metabolomic data, food metabolomics becomes a powerful investigative tool.