A "Foodomic" Approach for the Evaluation of Food Quality and its Impact on the Human Metabolome

In recent years, omic sciences have been increasingly employed in many research fields thanks to their high-throughput capabilities and holistic approach. Among the omics sciences, metabolomics and foodomics have recently emerged for the investigation of food and nutrition and their relation to the individual health and wellness status. The analytical platforms used are ideal for non-targeted analysis, due to their capability of detecting and identifying a large set of variables (or metabolites) in complex biological samples. The most employed metabolomics techniques are mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, empowered by the advent and advancement of multivariate data analysis. This thesis outlines the analytical pipeline of the foodomic approach and highlights the current challenges in the field, tracing the path of modern foodomics from the definition and description of food quality to the profiling of the human metabolome, and the investigation of the impact of food on human health, the prevention of diseases and the identification of biomarkers of health status. The impact of factors such as genetic modification or farming method was investigated in plant-based foods. And the effect of the food matrix and digestion on the stability and bioaccessibility of specific molecules was assessed. The animal metabolome was also studied, for example investigating the effect of antibiotic treatment on necrotizing enterocolitis as a model for the treatment of this condition in human newborns, too. The human metabolome (plasma, serum, urine) was then explored, firstly to develop specific algorithms for the search of dietary biomarkers in observational studies. Moreover, food intake biomarkers have been discovered in an intervention study (i.e. galactose for milk intake) and will be further investigated. Research was also carried out to investigate on specific disease-related biomarkers and to discover possible trajectories from a disease state to a healthier condition.