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This chapter aims to address an issue of ancient origins, but more and more topical in a globalized world in which consumers and stakeholders are increasingly aware: the authenticity of food. Foods are systems that can also be very complex, and verifying the correspondence between what is declared and the actual characteristics of the product is often a challenging issue. The complexity of the question we want to answer (is the food authentic?) means that the answer is equally articulated and makes use of many different analytical techniques. This chapter will consider the chemical analyses of foods aimed at guaranteeing their authenticity and will focus on frontier methods that have been developed in recent years to address the need to respond to ever-increasing guarantees of authenticity. Targeted and non-targeted approaches will be considered for verifying the authenticity of foods, through the study of different classes of constituents (proteins, metabolites, lipids, flavors). The numerous approaches available (proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics) and the related analytical techniques (LC-MS, GC-MS, NMR) are first described from a more general point of view, after which their specific application for the purposes of authentication of food is addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, due to the significant increase in hypertension, peptides which are able to reduce blood pressure have gained special interest by scientific research and food industry. Several bioactive peptides with ascertained ACE-inhibitory activity have been found in Parmigiano Reggiano (PR) cheese and/or mixtures deriving from its digestion in vitro, and this may be predictive of its potential antihypertensive effect in vivo. This study investigated the long-term effect of feeding (PR) cheese on blood pressure (BP) of spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs). A total of 30 male SHRs, 13 weeks old, were subdivided into 6 groups balanced for body weight and BP, to receive daily dietary supplementation with: 0.1–0.2–0.4–0.6 g PR/rat, captopril, and water. Systolic and diastolic BP were recorded every two weeks, for 10 weeks. Blood samples were collected at the end of the trial. Dietary integration with PR led to a transitory reduction in rats' pressure in the first 35 days of treatment and pressure decreased in a dose-dependent manner. In the second part of the study, the beneficial effect of PR antihypertensive peptides may have been masked and reduced by the increase in BP of rats linked to the rise in age of animals. No PR derived peptides were detected in rats' serum. Highlights: Parmigiano Reggiano (PR) cheese led to a transitory reduction in rats' pressure in the first 35 days of treatment. This effect was PR dose dependent. The highest amounts of PR tested did not increase both systolic and diastolic blood pressures of hypertensive rats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

D-amino acids can affect the action of digestive enzymes, hence the protein digestion. In this work the behaviour of the main stomach and gut digestive enzymes (pepsin, trypsin, and chymotrypsin) in the presence of D-amino acids in the protein chain was monitored over time using a model peptide, Ac-LDAQSAPLRVYVE-NH 2 (belonging to β-lactoglobulin, position 48-60), where L-amino acids were systematically substituted by D-amino acids. The results showed several changes in the behaviour of digestive enzymes, not only when the D-amino acids are inserted at the specific cleavage sites (after Val-57), but in some cases also when in distant positions. The effect seemed more pronounced in the case of pepsin rather than the gut enzymes, possibly indicating a better resilience of the upper gut phase of digestion to racemization. These results demonstrated that racemization could impair nutritional value by slowing down digestibility and has different effects according to the enzyme/amino acids involved., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Nothing declared., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)