Maria Fiorenza Caboni

Human milk is universally recognized as theref optimal source of nutrition for infants. However, breastfeeding may not always be possible or may need to be interrupted because of maternal or infant health conditions. In these situations, infant formulas represent an important nutritional alternative and are subject to strict compositional regulations. Despite these requirements, commercially available formulas may differ in ingredients and nutritional composition. The aim of this study was to characterize an infant formula produced using fresh whole cow’s milk and to compare it with commercially available infant formulas. The raw milk used as the principal dairy ingredient was chemically characterized, and the resulting formula was analyzed for macronutrients, fatty acids, protein fractions, vitamins, minerals, and selected micronutrients. The label-declared nutritional values of the study formula were subsequently compared with those of five commercially available infant formulas. The raw milk exhibited a diverse compositional profile, including fatty acid spectrum and micronutrients. The final formula contained several nutritionally relevant components characteristic of bovine milk, including lipid-related compounds and micronutrients. Comparison among the six infant formulas revealed limited variability in macronutrient content but greater differences in lipid composition, vitamin content, and mineral profiles. This study provides an integrated compositional characterization of the principal dairy ingredient, the resulting infant formula, and its position within the landscape of commercially available products. The findings indicate that infant formulas complying with the same regulatory framework may nevertheless differ in their detailed compositional profiles, highlighting the importance of compositional assessment beyond label-declared nutritional information.

Italian production of royal jelly (RJ) is modest compared to imports, as domestic producers face much higher production costs than their foreign counterparts. To mitigate the competitive advantage of imported products, Italian producers could adopt marketing strategies emphasizing the local origin of their royal jelly. An especially interesting opportunity for Sicilian producers lies in RJ obtained from the siciliana spp. of Apis mellifera, commonly known as the black honeybee, rather than from the widespread A. mellifera ligustica. This study employed ¹H-NMR and NIR spectroscopies to identify key metabolomic traits of artisanal royal jelly (n = 5) produced by A. m. siciliana in order to differentiate it from mass-produced (n = 5) and artisanal samples from A. m. ligustica (n = 6). Commercially available samples, whose market price was at least five times lower than Italian artisanal products, were used as references to represent mass-produced RJ from A. mellifera ligustica. To validate the suitability of the discriminant metabolites or wavelengths as potential biomarkers, an unsupervised multivariate model was built on these features and subsequently applied to additional artisanal samples produced by A. m. ligustica of known Italian origin. Among the 36 metabolites identified by ¹H-NMR, seven showed statistically significant differences between A. m. siciliana and mass-produced samples. Notably, glucose, melibiose and UDP-glucose were more abundant in commercial samples. Artisanal samples from A. m. ligustica exhibited intermediate features between those from A. m. siciliana and mass-produced samples from A. m. ligustica, while specific differences between the two artisanal groups were also observed. NIR spectroscopy further confirmed distinct profiles between artisanal A. m. siciliana and mass-produced samples from A. m. ligustica, with Italian artisanal samples from A. m. ligustica showing greater similarities to the former.

The influence of different lipid blends on the physicochemical, nutritional, and sensory characteristics of short dough biscuits was investigated in comparison with a conventional formulation containing palm oil. Six different lipid matrices were employed: palm oil, butter, high-oleic sunflower oil, butter/extra virgin olive oil, butter/high-oleic sunflower oil, and a coconut/sunflower oil mixture. Biscuits were analyzed for fatty acid composition, sterols, tocols, oxidative stability, texture, and sensory attributes. The results showed a variability in the lipid composition. In particular, formulations containing high-oleic sunflower oil and its blends exhibited higher monounsaturated fatty acids and α-tocopherol, while coconut-based samples displayed greater saturated fatty acids and an improved oxidative stability. Butter-containing biscuits had the highest sterol concentration, mainly cholesterol. Textural and sensory evaluations revealed how the lipid fraction significantly affected crispiness, friability, and flavour perception. Biscuits formulated with high-oleic sunflower oil or butter achieved desirable structural and sensory properties, while the coconut/sunflower oil sample obtained the highest overall acceptability. The findings demonstrate that replacing palm oil with selected lipid blends can produce biscuits with an improved lipid quality and oxidative stability and satisfactory sensory performance, contributing to healthier and more sustainable bakery products.

Pasta is a staple food with daily recommended consumption; thus, it can be an excellent vehicle for delivering bioactive compounds like phenols. However, the high-temperature drying process in pasta production, combined with cooking in boiling water, can significantly reduce the concentration of phenolic compounds. This study aimed to enhance the phenolic content of traditional semolina pasta by incorporating tomato and spinach powder into the recipe. High-performance liquid chromatography–electrospray ionization triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI-QqQ-MS) was employed to analyse the free and bound phenolic content in the raw materials, as well as in both dried uncooked and cooked pasta. The addition of tomato and spinach powders, known for their high content in bioactive compounds, increased the overall phenolic content of the final enriched pasta by three and two times, respectively, compared to the semolina and whole-wheat semolina pasta. These findings suggest that pasta enriched with tomato and spinach could serve as a functional food with a greater nutritional profile and health benefits through the enhanced delivery of phenolic compounds.

At present, whole grains are usually obtained by adding bran and middlings to refined flours, and this recombination leads to certain variations in the ratio of endosperm, bran and germ, resulting in flours with very different compositional characteristics and rheological properties. Therefore, this study focuses on the identification of specific lipid markers in different debranning fractions of Italian and Canadian durum wheat blends. The by-products obtained from five different debranning levels (3, 6, 9, 12 and 15%) had a high content of monounsaturated fatty acids and a higher concentration of tocopherols and sterols than the corresponding debranned grains. The Italian and Canadian durum wheat samples did not show significant differences in the content of these bioactive lipid compounds. In particular, palmitic acid, oleic acid, tocopherol isomers and total sterols could be useful biomarkers for evaluating the grain-to-tissue ratio in recombined flours.

Voghiera garlic is an Italian white garlic variety which obtained in 2010 the Protected Designation of Origin. It is widely used for culinary purposes or as an ingredient for supplement production due to its phytochemical compositions. The storage conditions seem to be crucial to retain the high quality of garlic bulbs and their by-products, taking into account the high importance of organosulfur and phenolic compounds for the bioactive potency of garlic and its shelf-life. This study aims to examine the effect of storage on the phytochemical composition, biological effects, and shelf-life of Voghiera garlic PDO. In detail, we considered (i) −4 °C (industrial storage) for 3, 6, and 9 months; (ii) +4 °C for 3 months (home conservation), and (iii) −4 °C for 3 months, plus +4 °C for another 3 months. We focused our attention on the organosulfur compounds, total condensed tannins, flavonoids, phenolic compounds, and related antioxidant activity changes during the storage period. To evaluate the bioactive effects, the Voghiera garlic extracts at different storage conditions were administered to a breast cancer cell line, while antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity was detected using macrophage RAW 264.7 cells. We observed a decrease in sulfur compounds after 6 months which correlated to a decrease in bioactive effects, while the number of antioxidant compounds was stable during the storage period, showing the good effect of refrigerated temperature in maintaining garlic bulb shelf-life.

Supplementation of omega-3 fatty acids is considered a valuable strategy to supply the low intake of these fatty acids. Thus, the safety of the supplements is an important milestone. Because of that, we analyzed 20 unflavored supplements sold in the French market for fatty acid and triglyceride composition, for EPA and DHA, and for tocol content, as well as for oxidative status. This study found that only 2.5% of the supplements did not meet their label claims for omega-3 content. TAG analysis showed high variability among the triglyceride distribution, and the same trend was also noticed for the tocol content; in fact, a high variability of the distribution of the six tocols (four tocopherols and two tocotrienols) was found among the samples. Of the tested products, all of them complied with peroxide value, p-anisidine value, and Totox values established by the Global Organization for EPA and DHA Omega-3s (GOED) and were not oxidized.

Wheat germ (WG)’s shelf life after the milling process is incredibly short because of the presence of enzymes that aggravate the oxidation process; thus, stabilization is required in order to exploit the nutrients and bioactive compounds within WG. The critical point for the oxidation process is the mechanical treatment used to separate WG from the kernel, which exposes the lipid fraction to the air. Showing the connection between the quality of durum wheat, considering its storage management, and wheat germ oil (WGO), extracted with a cold press, solvent and supercritical CO₂, is the aim of the study. The acidity and peroxide values were analyzed to evaluate lipid oxidation, while fatty acids, tocols, sterols and policosanols were evaluated for WGO characterization. The first fundamental step to control lipid oxidation is raw material management. Subsequently, the tempering phase of durum wheat, which is applied before the degermination process, is the most critical point for oxidation to develop because of the increase in moisture in the caryopsis and the activation of lipase and lipoxygenase. This represents a paradox: in order to stabilize the germ with degermination, first it seems inevitable to carry out a process that destabilizes it. To retains its highest quality, this will lead to a better use of the whole grain by reducing WG and by-product waste.

The food waste reduction through an efficient recovery of its valuable building molecules has become an important topic with a positive effect on the economy and the environment. In this work, the revalorization of slaughterhouse calf fleshing meat through its enzymatic hydrolysis is proposed. The proteolytic activity of 11 enzymes was initially screened and the four most efficient enzymes (papain, trypsin, pancreatin, and bromelain) were selected. The molecular profiling of the different protein/peptide fractions by the Linear Trap Quadrupole-OrbiTrap technique showed compositional differences due to the specificity of the enzymes’ cleavage sites. In order to find a potential reuse of these hydrolysates, the analysis of antioxidant and, for the first time on fleshing meat hydrolysates, of anti-tyrosinase activities, was performed. Papain-digested samples were those showing the highest inhibition activity of tyrosinase enzyme (55.6%) as well as the highest antioxidant activity (3.52 g TEAC/L). In addition, the composition analysis of the lipid fraction was performed. The mono-unsaturated fatty acids resulted to be the most abundant lipid in all the samples with the exception of pancreatin-treated hydrolysates in which poly-unsaturated fatty acids were predominant. The present results seemed to support a possible valorization of isolated fractions from calf fleshing by-products, as food or feed ingredients, by the implementation of fraction isolation within the meat-processing pipeline.