Green Foodomics: New environmentally friendly processes for bioactives extraction

Abstract

Foodomics, defined for the first time in our research group attempts to provide a global vision on the relationship between food and health through the use of -omics technologies. Green Foodomics follows up this approach while contributing to the greenness, sustainability and ecology of Foodomics as a whole. Foodomics is by itself a green discipline that tries to provide with new answers to the challenges of our society; aspects related to the sustainability, food quality and safety are basically embedded in the own Foodomics' definition. Other aspects such as those related with the rational design of new foods able to improve human health and to prevent illnesses are basically green by themselves since they will contribute to obtaining safer foods, with lower contamination and chemical risks. The present talk will present different green alternatives for the production of new functional food ingredients (based on the use of compressed fluids and the design of integrated processes producing less residues and consuming lower amounts of energy) and how these processes can be applied towards the greening of the analytical methodologies used for food quality, traceability and safety. Among other examples, some research works developed in our laboratory will be presented dealing with the direct extraction, using SFE (Supercritical Fluid Extraction), of carotenoids from Neochlorisoleoabundans biomass, the isolation of several bioactives (carotenoids and gamma-linolenic acid) from algae using gas expanded liquids (GXLs), the extraction of antioxidants from plants and algae using integrated processes (extraction and particle formation or enzymatic hydrolysis plus extraction) and the use of LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) tool to evaluate the environmental impact of the different extraction and analytical processes.