This book discusses the scope and limitations of the antimicrobial and antioxidant properties of foods as medicines or medicinal coadjuvants in traditional Indian herbal therapies. The first chapter introduces readers to the relevance of the Ayurveda system, its holistic classification approach, applications of selected herbs and the demonstrable efficacy of herbal extracts in terms of antimicrobial susceptibility. In turn, the second chapter discusses the antimicrobial properties and kinetic mechanisms of inhibition ascribed to selected vegetable extracts. The third chapter addresses the antioxidant power of phenolic compounds from vegetable products and herbal extracts. The book closes with a review of natural antioxidant agents' role in the treatment of metabolic disorders. Written from an Indian perspective, this book unravels the chemistry of the traditional Indian diet and its impact on health. Further, it can serve as a reference for other traditional products with similar health claims.

This book presents the concept of food sharing from a European perspective, and provides a concise analysis of its safety implications and the chemical properties of recovered foods. In our modern world, 33% of the total food produced is lost each year, with serious economic, environmental and social consequences. Food worth approximately 1 trillion USD is wasted per year, and it is estimated that this wasted food could feed more than 3.4 billion people. Considering that 1/10 of the global population still does not have enough money for basic needs, and in view of the impact of consumer behaviour, food retailers and industry in food waste, food sharing appears to be an attractive solution, and several communities have recently been created with the main goal of saving food and giving it to those in need. Despite the positive impact of food sharing, it also raises concerns since recovered foods are subject to spoilage, decay and irreversible chemical-physical transformations. In this book, the authors explore the current situation and the regulatory definition of food sharing in various European countries, presenting the German experience in the city of Magdeburg, where food-sharing networks have been implemented. They also discuss the chemical and safety evaluations of durable foods, and provide a simulation of food waste by comparing a food product with the same food produced with re-worked and still edible raw materials (recovered foods).

This Brief reviews thermal processes in the food industry - pasteurization, sterilization, UHT processes, and others. It evaluates the effects on a chemical level and possible failures from a safety viewpoint, and discusses in how far the effects can be predicted. In addition, historical preservation techniques - smoking, addition of natural additives, irradiation, etc. - are compared with current industrial systems, like fermentation, irradiation, addition of food-grade chemicals. The Brief critically discusses storage protocols - cooling, freezing, etc. - and packing systems (modified atmosphere technology, active and intelligent packaging). Can undesired chemical effects on the food products be predicted? This Brief elucidates on this important question. On that basis, new challenges, that currently arise in the food sector, can be approached.

This Brief discusses aspects of the increasingly complex production of legal and reliable food products of non-animal origin. It introduces to the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in the USA (from January 2011), which requires the food industry to follow risk-based approaches with stronger self-regulation of food safety through measures such as the foreign supplier verification programs (FSVPs). The Brief addresses important chemical hazards of vegetable products: their peculiar microbial ecology, that can become responsible for the occurrence of specific foodborne disease outbreaks, and the chemistry of the involved neurotoxins and other dangerous molecules, that can potentially lead to lethal pathological reactions. Finally, the Brief also critically discusses the technology of ready-to-eat vegetable products and chemical and physical modifications used for packed products (respiration of vegetables, colorimetric modifications, etc.).