Cocoa flavanols are absorbed, metabolized, and excreted in healthy young and elderly subjects with relatively small differences between the two groups.

Cocoa is rich in a subclass of flavonoids known as flavanols, the cardiovascular health benefits of which have been extensively reported. The appearance of flavanol metabolites in the systemic circulation after flavanol-rich food consumption is likely to mediate the physiological effects on the vascular system, and these levels are influenced by numerous factors, including food matrix, processing, intake, age, gender, or genetic polymorphisms, among others. This review will focus on our current understanding of factors affecting the absorption, metabolism, and excretion of cocoa flavanols in humans. Second, it will identify gaps in these contributing factors that need to be addressed to conclusively translate our collective knowledge into the context of public health, dietary guidelines, and evidence-based dietary recommendations.

Recently, an innovative gluten detoxification method called Gluten FriendlyTM (GF) has been developed. It induces structural modifications, which abolish the antigenic capacity of gluten and reduce the in vitro immunogenicity of the most common epitopes involved in celiac disease, without compromising the nutritional and technological properties. This study investigated the in vitro effects of GF bread (GFB) on the fecal microbiota from healthy and celiac individuals by a three-stage continuous fermentative system, which simulates the colon (vessel 1, proximal colon; vessel 2, transverse colon; and vessel 3, distal colon), as well as on the production of short chain fatty acids (SCFA, acetate, propionate, butyrate). The system was fed with GFB and the changes in microbiota through fluorescence in situ hybridization and in SCFA content were assessed. GFB exerted beneficial modulations such as bifidogenic effects in each compartment of the model both with healthy- and celiac-derived samples, as well as growth in Clostridium clusters XIVa+b in celiac-derived samples. Furthermore, increased levels of acetic acid were found in vessel 1 inoculated with the fecal microbiota of healthy individuals, as well as acetic and propionic in vessel 1 and 2 with celiac-derived samples. In addition, the use of multivariate approaches showed that the supplementation of GFB could result in a different modulation of the fecal microbiota and SCFA, as a function of initial equilibrium.