The field of functional foods has seen a growing interest in the bioactive potential of plant-derived compounds such as polyphenols, flavonoids, terpenoids, carotenoids, polysaccharides, alkaloids, and bioactive peptides. These compounds hold promise beyond mere nutritional value, offering antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, metabolic, neurocognitive, and microbiota-regulating properties. Such pleiotropic bioactivities make them promising candidates for functional foods and nutraceuticals. However, their practical applications remain limited due to inherent instability, poor solubility, low bioavailability, and pronounced inter-individual variability driven by gut microbial metabolism. These challenges restrict their consistent efficacy and hinder translation from laboratory findings to real-world outcomes. In recent years, progress has been made through the development of food-grade stabilization and delivery approaches designed to protect sensitive compounds, improve bioaccessibility, and enable targeted release. At the same time, advances in vitro, in vivo, and integrative evaluation systems have provided more reliable tools for assessing biological activity and nutritional impact. Together, these efforts underscore the importance of bridging basic research with applied nutrition to achieve safe, effective, and sustainable use of plant-derived functional food factors.
This Research Topic aims to deepen the understanding of plant-derived bioactive compounds as functional food factors, focusing on their biological activities and in vivo efficacy. The focus will be on their diverse bioactivities ranging from antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects to neurocognitive and microbiota-regulating functions. Despite their potential for health promotion and disease prevention, their translation into consistent human benefits is hampered by issues like physicochemical instability and low bioavailability. This collection will feature studies that focus on the bioactivities and functions of these plant-derived compounds, either by elucidating their molecular mechanisms and structure–function relationships and delivery strategies designed to improve bioaccessibility, targeted efficacy, and translational potential in human nutrition.
To gather further insights into plant-derived functional food compounds, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
• Advanced approaches for discovering, characterizing the phytochemical diversity and functional utilization of plant-derived compounds.
• Comprehensive safety and toxicological assessments of plant-derived functional food factors and their processed products, coupled with the scientific substantiation of their health-promoting benefits.
• Investigations into the functional performance and structure-activity relationships of plant-derived functional food factors when integrated within advanced delivery systems.
• Studies on enhancing bioavailability and targeted efficacy of functional food factors.
Keywords: Bioactive compounds, Bioavailability and bioefficacy, Molecular mechanism, Advanced delivery systems, Precision nutrition
Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
