Metabolomics insights into the potential of encapsulated essential oils as multifunctional food additives

Abstract

Growing consumer concern about foodborne disease outbreaks and health risks associated with chemical additives has propelled the usage of essential oils (EOs) as novel food additives, but are limited by instability. In this regard, a series of EOs nano/micro-capsules have been widely used to enhance their stability and improve food quality. However, classical food quality assessment methods are insufficient to fully characterize the effects of encapsulated EOs on food properties, including physical, biochemical, organoleptic, and microbial changes. Recently, the rapid development of high-throughput sequencing is accelerating the application of metabolomics in food safety and quality analysis. This review seeks to present the most recent achievements in the application of non-targeted metabolomics to identify and quantify the overall metabolite profile associated with food quality, which can guide the development of emerging food preservation technologies. The scientific findings confirm that metabolomics opens up exciting prospects for biomarker screening in food preservation and contributes to an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms of action (MoA) of EOs. Future research should focus on constructing food quality assessment criteria based on multi-omics technologies, which will drive the standardization and commercialization of EOs for food industry applications.

Keywords:

• Essential oils
• food additives
• encapsulated EOs
• metabolomics
• biomarker
• mechanisms of action

Disclosure statement

No conflicts of interest are declared for any of the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by State Key Laboratory of Utilization of Woody Oil Resource (Grant no. 2019XK 2002), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 31972172), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant no. BK20201417), Jiangsu Province Research Fund (Grant no. JNHB-131), and Jiangsu University Research Fund (Grant no. 11JDG050).