Dietary phenolics, absorption, mammalian and microbial metabolism and colonic health

✍ Scribed by Alan Crozier

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 390 KB
• Volume: 53
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1613-4125
• DOI: 10.1002/mnfr.200990016

✦ Synopsis

This special on-line edition of Molecular Nutrition & Food

Research focuses on topics related to dietary flavonoids and phenolics, their absorption, mammalian and microbial metabolism and colonic health. Flavonoids and phenolic compounds in fruits and vegetables have attracted increasing interest since the 1990s owing to the growing evidence of their potential for beneficial effects on human health [1]. This was stimulated in the first instance by the pioneering epidemiology of Hertog et al.

[2] which linked a lower mortality from cardiovascular disease in an elderly population of Dutch males with a high flavonol intake, principally from the consumption of onions, apples and tea. With the great gift of hindsight, it is now evident that in the majority of circumstances epidemiology is too blunt an instrument to link health to intake of a specific phytochemical or group of phytochemicals. Onions, apples and tea all contain a diversity of phytochemicals, some in substantially higher concentrations than flavonols [3], so what the Zutphen study [2] actually revealed was that consumption of a diet rich in apples, tea and onions is associated with lower mortality from cardiovascular disease. Nonetheless, this classic investigation acted as a catalyst, awakening interest in the role of flavonols and other flavonoids as key components in the protective effects of a fruit and vegetable-rich diet.

We now know much, although far from all, about these compounds and their fate within the body following ingestion. Most flavonoids and related phenolic compounds exist