Dear Colleagues,

Safety, nutrition, origin, functionality, authenticity and sensory quality are key facets of food quality. Food items constitute complex chemical mixtures that comprise diverse groups of molecules with important nutritional value, which may provide health-beneficial effects, could bear the role of a varietal or geographical marker, shape organoleptic characteristics and, therefore, contribute to the product's quality characteristics. Hippocrates quoted, ‘‘Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food". In alignment with this, consumers today do not regard food as only sustenance, but also as a means to promote well-being. An arsenal of multi-omics approaches, bioinformatics tools and databases are applied to assess such complex matrices, elucidate their chemical composition, and investigate their impact on metabolism and health. NMR spectroscopy is a cutting-edge robust and reproducible screening tool for the food-omics holistic approach, as it captures a snapshot for primary and secondary metabolites, relating them to the following:

• Geographic, varietal, organoleptic and environmental factors, and production processes (food metabolomics).
• Nutritional value, dietary intake biomarkers, and health-beneficial effects (nutrimetabolomics).

In this context, research efforts that highlight the scalability and utility of NMR food-omics in the assessment of food quality and the modulation of health and well-being are encouraged. 

Dr. Charalambos Fotakis
Dr. Maria Zervou
Guest Editors

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• food-omics
• NMR spectroscopy
• chemometrics
• food metabolites
• food quality
• food safety
• traceability
• authenticity
• dietary intake biomarkers
• food-related functional compounds