Systematic Approaches to Understanding Bioactive Food Components in Nutrition and Health

Functional foods and bioactive dietary components play an increasingly important role in clinical nutrition and public health. Although many plant- and food-derived compounds have been associated with beneficial effects on metabolic health and chronic disease risk, their translation into clinical practice remains limited by heterogeneous responses and insufficient mechanistic insight. Natural product chemistry provides a critical foundation for addressing these challenges by enabling the identification, structural characterization, and standardization of bioactive compounds within complex food matrices. Traditional nutritional assessments relying on a small number of biomarkers often fail to capture systemic metabolic changes induced by dietary interventions. Systems-oriented approaches, particularly metabolomics, allow comprehensive profiling of endogenous and diet-derived metabolites, facilitating direct linkage between specific bioactive components and biological pathways. By integrating natural product chemistry, metabolomics, and clinical data, multi-omics strategies offer new opportunities to elucidate mechanisms of action and improve the translational evaluation of functional foods in precision nutrition.The goal of this research topic is to promote research applying systems-oriented approaches to elucidate the biological effects of bioactive food components in nutrition and health. This topic aims to (i) highlight studies that combine natural product chemistry with clinical and metabolic evaluations of functional foods and bioactive compounds, (ii) encourage integrative metabolomics and multi-omics analyses that advance mechanistic interpretation of dietary interventions, and (iii) support the identification of chemically defined, exposure- and response-related biomarkers underlying efficacy and inter-individual variability. By fostering interdisciplinary contributions across nutrition science, food chemistry, metabolomics, and systems biology, this topic seeks to strengthen mechanism-based evidence, standardization, and translational relevance in functional food research and clinical nutrition strategies.This topic welcomes original research articles, reviews, and methodological studies addressing bioactive food components and their roles in nutrition and health. Relevant contributions include studies on functional foods, chemically characterized plant- and food-derived compounds, dietary interventions, metabolic regulation, inflammation, oxidative stress, and host–microbiome interactions. Research employing metabolomics and other omics technologies (lipidomics, transcriptomics, proteomics), as well as integrative multi-omics approaches that link dietary components to biological pathways, is particularly encouraged. Conventional nutritional, biochemical, and molecular analyses are also within scope when supported by clear mechanistic interpretation. Studies using structural elucidation, evaluation of biological properties, animal experiments, and any human clinical trials or related datasets are appropriate. Emphasis is placed on mechanism-driven, systems-level, and translational research that advances evidence-based development of functional foods and nutrition strategies. Topic editors: Jae Sik Yu, Vinod Kumar Paswan, Gakyung Lee Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/78177/systematic-approaches-to-understanding-bioactive-food-components-in-nutrition-and-health