Functional Foods for Healthy Ageing: Bioactive Strategies Targeting Malnutrition, Frailty, and Gut Health in Older Adults

Healthy ageing is one of the defining public health challenges of the 21st century. As the global population aged 60 and over is projected to exceed 2 billion by 2050, ensuring adequate nutrition for older adults is critical to maintaining quality of life, independence, and systemic health. Malnutrition — encompassing both undernutrition and micronutrient deficiency — remains highly prevalent in community, hospital, and long-term care settings, driven by reduced appetite, anabolic resistance, chronic disease, polypharmacy, inflammaging, dysphagia, and social isolation.Recent research has moved beyond conventional supplementation toward food-first and functional food strategies that are nutrient-dense, bioactive, digestible, and tailored to the physiological demands of ageing. Growing interest spans protein- and energy-enriched formulations, leucine-rich products, micronutrient-fortified foods, texture-modified options, and microbiome-targeted strategies — including fermented foods, postbiotics, and ingredients derived from microbial bioprocesses. These approaches hold promise not only for addressing nutritional deficits but for modulating immunity, muscle health, cognition, and gut function in older populations.This Research Topic invites multidisciplinary contributions — including original research, clinical trials, translational studies, and contemporary reviews — that advance the design, efficacy, mechanisms, and real-world implementation of functional food strategies for healthy and sustainable ageing.Topics of interest include:• Development and clinical evaluation of protein-, energy-, and micronutrient-enriched functional foods for older adults• Food-based strategies targeting sarcopenia, frailty, inflammaging, immune dysfunction, and cognitive decline• Functional foods from microbiological sources, including fermented foods, prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics, and bioactive compounds derived from microbial fermentation processes• Texture-modified, dysphagia-friendly, and sensory-optimized foods to improve nutritional intake, safety, and eating experience in older adults• Implementation research on acceptability, accessibility, sustainability, and culturally adapted food solutions for ageing populations across diverse real-world settings Topic editors: Jean-Michel Fernandes, Raquel Gonçalves Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/81060/functional-foods-for-healthy-ageing-bioactive-strategies-targeting-malnutrition-frailty-and-gut-health-in-older-adults