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Plant-based beverages have gained consumers' attention for being the main substitutes for dairy milk, especially for people with lactose intolerance, milk allergies, and a prevalence of hypercholesterolemia. Moreover, there is a growing demand for a more sustainable diet and plant-based lifestyle due to concerns related to animal wellbeing, environmental impacts linked to dairy production, and the rising cost of animal-derived foods. However, there are some factors that restrict plant-based beverage consumption, including their nutritional quality and poor sensory profile. In this context, fermentation processes can contribute to the improvement of their sensory properties, nutritional composition, and functional/bioactive profile. In particular, the fermentation process can enhance flavor compounds (e.g., acetoin and acetic acid) while decreasing off-flavor components (e.g., hexanal and hexanol) in the substrate. Furthermore, it enhances the digestibility and bioavailability of nutrients, leading to increased levels of vitamins (e.g., ascorbic acid and B complex), amino acids (e.g., methionine and tryptophan), and proteins, while simultaneously decreasing the presence of anti-nutritional factors (e.g., phytic acid and saponins). In contrast, plant-based fermented beverages have been demonstrated to possess diverse bioactive compounds (e.g., polyphenols and peptides) with different biological properties (e.g., antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antihypertensive). Therefore, this article provides an overview of plant-based fermented beverages including their production, technological aspects, and health benefits.

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Food bioactive peptides are well recognized for their health benefits such as antimicrobial, antioxidant, and antihypertensive benefits, among others. Their drug-like behavior has led to their potential use in targeting skin-related aging factors like the inhibition of enzymes related with the skin-aging process. In this study, canary seed peptides (CSP) after simulated gastrointestinal digestion (<3 kDa) were fractioned by RP-HPLC and their enzyme-inhibition activity towards elastase and tyrosinase was evaluated in vitro. CSP inhibited elastase (IC50 = 6.2 mg/mL) and tyrosinase (IC50 = 6.1 mg/mL), while the hydrophobic fraction-VI (0.2 mg/mL) showed the highest inhibition towards elastase (93%) and tyrosinase (67%). The peptide fraction with the highest inhibition was further characterized by a multilevel in silico workflow, including physicochemical descriptor calculations, antioxidant activity predictions, and molecular dynamics-ensemble docking towards elastase and tyrosinase. To gain insights into the skin permeation process during molecular dynamics simulations, based on their docking scores, five peptides (GGWH, VPPH, EGLEPNHRVE, FLPH, and RPVNKYTPPQ) were identified to have favorable intermolecular interactions, such as hydrogen bonding of polar residues (W, H, and K) to lipid polar groups and 2-3 Å van der Waals close contact of hydrophobic aliphatic residues (P, V, and L). These interactions can play a critical role for the passive insertion of peptides into stratum corneum model skin-membranes, suggesting a promising application of CSP for skin-aging treatments.

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Food derived bioactive peptides are small protein fragments (2-20 amino acids long) that can exhibit health benefits, beyond basic nutrition. For example, food bioactive peptides can act as physiological modulators with hormone or drug-like activities including anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antioxidant, and the ability to inhibit enzymes related to chronic disease metabolism. Recently, bioactive peptides have been studied for their potential role as nutricosmetics. For example, bioactive peptides can impart skin-aging protection toward extrinsic (i.e., environmental and sun UV-ray damage) and intrinsic (i.e., natural cell or chronological aging) factors. Specifically, bioactive peptides have demonstrated antioxidant and antimicrobial activates toward reactive oxygen species (ROS) and pathogenic bacteria associated with skin diseases, respectively. The anti-inflammatory properties of bioactive peptides using in vivo models has also been reported, where peptides have shown to decreased the expression of IL-6, TNF-α, IL-1ß, interferon-γ (INF-γ), and interleukin-17 (IL-17) in mice models. This chapter will discuss the main factors that trigger skin-aging processes, as well as provide examples of in vitro, in vivo, and in silico applications of bioactive peptides in relation to nutricosmetic applications.

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Nowadays, edible insects are considered an outstanding source of nutrients, primarily because they contain high-quality protein, amino acids, and vitamins. Insects are considered a promising alternative protein source towards alleviating future global food shortage problems due to their production considered as being more sustainable by using less agricultural land and water, as well as releasing a smaller amount of greenhouse gas emissions. However, other important aspects to consider about the consumption of edible insects include their health benefits and some safety aspects, which has been relatively overlooked. In this sense, edible insects contain bioactive compounds that can provide diverse bioactivities, such as antioxidant, antihypertensive, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and immunomodulatory with a positive impact on human health. On the other hand, edible insects are a nutrient-rich food that can provide a perfect growth medium for diverse microorganisms, as well as possess some anti-nutritive factors. These two main aspects could represent food safety concerns for consumers. In this context, recent scientific evidence indicates that preservation methods, mainly thermal treatments, utilized in the cooking or processing of edible insects decreased the microbial levels and anti-nutritive factors, which suggests that edible insects do not represent a critical biological risk to humans. Besides, edible insects could have a positive effect on gut microbiota, either by their pre-biotic effect or their antimicrobial activity towards pathogens. Thus, this review is focused on studies related to the health benefits of edible insects and their isolated components, as well as discussion about potential issues related to their microbial content and anti-nutritive factors; this review will provide a synopsis on whether edible insects may be considered safe for human consumption.

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Chia seed peptides (CSP) can be a source of multifunctional biopeptides to treat non-communicable diseases. However, interactions and binding affinity involved in targeting specific receptors remains unexplored. In this study, molecular simulation techniques were used as virtual screening of CSP to determine drug-like candidates using a multi-target-directed ligand approach. CSP fraction with the best bioactivities in vitro was sequenced. Then, a prediction model was built using physicochemical descriptors (hydrophobicity, hydrophilicity, intestinal stability, antiangiogenic, antihypertensive, and anti-inflammatory) to calculate potential scores and rank possible biopeptides. Furthermore, molecular dynamics simulations (MDS) and ensemble molecular docking analysis were carried out using four human protein targets (ACE, angiotensin converting enzyme; VEGF, vascular endothelial growth factor; GLUC, glucocorticoid and MINC, mineralocorticoid receptors). Five known-sequence peptides (NNVFYPF, FNIVFPG, SRPWPIDY, QLQRWFR, GSRFDWTR) and five de novo peptides (DFKF, DLRF, FKAF, FRSF, QFRF) had the lowest energy score and higher affinity for ACE and VEGF. The therapeutic effects of these selected peptides can be related to the inhibition of the enzymes involved in angiogenesis and hypertension, due to formation of stable complexes with VEGF and ACE binding sites, respectively. The application of MDS is a good resource for identifying bioactive peptides for future experimental validation.

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In silico tools, such as molecular docking, are widely applied to study interactions and binding affinity of biological activity of proteins and peptides. However, restricted sampling of both ligand and receptor conformations and use of approximated scoring functions can produce results that do not correlate with actual experimental binding affinities. Molecular dynamics simulations (MDS) can provide valuable information in deciphering functional mechanisms of proteins/peptides and other biomolecules, overcoming the rigid sampling limitations in docking analysis. This review will discuss the information related to the traditional use of in silico models, such as molecular docking, and its application for studying food proteins and bioactive peptides, followed by an in-depth introduction to the theory of MDS and description of why these molecular simulation techniques are important in the theoretical prediction of structural and functional dynamics of food proteins and bioactive peptides. Applications, limitations, and future prospects of MDS will also be discussed.

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The practice of eating insects is not a new phenomenon; however, the interest for their consumption has increased in recent years due to their recognized nutritional value (high content of micro- and macronutrient), potential health benefits (presence of bioactive substances), and low-environmental impact (use of less resources and reduced pollution levels). Currently, research on insects has focused on the promotion of various processing technologies for their use as either ingredients (in a non-recognizable form) to the development of innovative products, or as sources of novel bioactive compounds. In this context, evidence has suggested that alternative technologies, particularly fermentation, could be used the obtain diverse insect-based ingredients/products with unique properties. Therefore, the purpose of this narrative review was to provide an overview of the available literature on fermentation applied to obtain new insect-based products, to summarize the patents and patent-applications to protect fermented edible insect products and processes, as well as to enlist examples of current available products in the market.

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