Recent Advances in Research on Wild Food Plants and Their Biological–Pharmacological Activity

Abstract

Local food plants are widely used in the Mediterranean and most of these are also acclaimed for having important health benefits. It is difficult to define the exact borderlines between a food and a medicinal plant in local culture. In this review, nine examples are used to demonstrate both the strategies currently used to investigate these plants for their biological and pharmacological effects and to showcase some examples of plants and our current knowledge about them. Among the best studied plants are those which either have yielded cultivars commonly used as a food like Cichorium intybus or species which are used for specific medicinal properties like Malva sylvestris. For most other species, very limited information is available and often data about biological activities are linked to in silico or in vitro antioxidant screening, which are, of course, of very limited relevance for defining specific preventive or therapeutic uses. Therefore, this review also highlights the need for more rigorous and systematic studies of commonly used local food and medicinal plants used throughout the Mediterranean.