Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Assessment of natural contaminants from plant-based ingredients
Coordinator
MetaOmics and MultiOmics approaches will be used for the identification and quantification of toxic compounds in novel sources or ingredients, also to anticipate risks related to novel foods and new sustainable food processes. The culture collection from task 3.1.1 will be used for challenge experiments in pilot plants mimicking industrial manufacturing. Food toxicants in new ingredients and food processing technologies will be evaluated (in connection with Spoke 2). Allergenicity (also with computational approaches) and toxicity will be considered by in vitro and in vivo tests. Exposure assessment and risk- benefit assessment (RBA) of novel foods will be performed.
RA of food toxicants (M30)
Report on the formation, accumulation, and modification of food toxicants along the food production chain
Workflows for innovative allergenicity assessment
Over the past few years reducing the consumption of animal-based foods has been considered a key element for healthy and sustainable diets. For this reason, plant-based alternatives are continuously expanding in the food market. However, little has been done so far to assess the risk related to an extensive consumption of meat/milk imitates, mainly in terms of natural contaminants. As a matter of fact, it must be noticed that shifting toward milk/meat analogues can lead to a substantial change of exposure to certain food contaminants compared to an omnivore diet (i.e. natural toxins, anti-nutritional factors), not to mention the increased allergenic potential. Very recently, UNIPR has proposed the first comprehensive risk assessment of plant-based meat analogues related to mycotoxin exposure (Mihalache et al. 2022), and is now extending the approach to cover other natural toxins as well as antinutritional factors and allergens, also in view of potential mitigation by processing (Calcinai et al. 2022).
The proposal will involve the following steps:
1. Collection of occurrence data for selected contaminants (I.e. natural toxins, plant alkaloids) in plant-based ingredients used for meat and milk imitates.
2. Application of computational methods to identify and prioritise antinutritional factors and potential allergenic proteins
3. Molecular characterization of proteins in plant-based ingredients through proteomics tools.
4. Allergenicity assessment through in silico methods, by comparing identified proteins with known homologous allergens.
5. In vitro allergenicity assessment by applying immunoreactive tests.
6. Assessing the potential for allergen mitigation due to processing (ie. protein extrusion, enzymatic hydrolysis, heat treatments).
7. Evaluation of the protein digestibility of plant-based ingredients, through the application of in vitro simulated digestion models, also evaluating the Interaction digestibility/allergenicity.
8. Study the influence of digestion processes on the allergen stability.
1) Collection of occurrence/exposure data to be provided to public health agencies (M18).
2) Guideline of mitigation strategies to be distributed to the industrial stakeholders (M24).
3) Detailed identification of the protein fraction in the plant-based ingredients (M18).
4) Identification of the allergenic risk of the plant-based ingredients through in silico and in vitro immunological tests (M24).
5) Effects on processing and digestibility on plant-based allergenicity mitigation ( M24).
