Food intake biomarkers for green leafy vegetables, bulb vegetables, and stem vegetables: a review

Abstract

Background: Numerous studies acknowledged the importance of an adequate vegetable consumption for human health. However, current methods to estimate vegetable intake are often prone to measurement errors due to self-reporting and/or insufficient detail. More objective intake biomarkers for vegetables, using biological specimens, are preferred. The only concentration biomarkers currently available are blood carotenoids and vitamin C, covering total fruit and vegetable intake. Identification of biomarkers for specific vegetables is needed for a better understanding of their relative importance for human health. Within the FoodBAll Project under the Joint Programming Initiative "A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life", an ambitious action was undertaken to identify candidate intake biomarkers for all major food groups consumed in Europe by systematically reviewing the existent literature. This study describes the review on candidate biomarkers of food intake (BFIs) for leafy, bulb, and stem vegetables, which was conducted within PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science for studies published through March 2019. Results: In total, 65 full-text articles were assessed for eligibility for leafy vegetables, and 6 full-text articles were screened for bulb and stem vegetables. Putative BFIs were identified for spinach, lettuce, endive, asparagus, artichoke, and celery, but not for rocket salad. However, after critical evaluation through a validation scheme developed by the FoodBAll consortium, none of the putative biomarkers appeared to be a promising BFI. The food chemistry data indicate that some candidate BFIs may be revealed by further studies. Conclusion: Future randomized controlled feeding studies combined with observational studies, applying a nontargeted metabolomics approach, are needed in order to identify valuable BFIs for the intake of leafy, bulb, and stem vegetables.

A Molecular Approach to Understanding the Role of Diet in Cancer-Related Fatigue: Challenges and Future Opportunities

“…Secondly, a priori-defined food biomarkers that have reached an appropriate level of validation [ 124 ] could be measured in association with CRF to test specific diet exposure-CRF hypotheses. For example, biomarkers of coffee (quinate, 3-hydroxypyridine sulfate, 1,3-dimethylurate), alcohol (ethyl glucuronide), multivitamins (pantothenate (B 5 ), pyridoxal, alpha-tocopherol) and citrus fruits (proline betaine) have been validated in large-scale cohort studies and subsequently tested in acute dietary intervention or feeding studies [ 116 , 125 , 126 , 127 , 128 , 129 , 130 , 131 ]. Leveraging nutritional metabolomics data derived from other types of biospecimens (e.g., fecal metabolites) may also provide novel insights, such as diet-microbiome interaction in relation to CRF.…”

Applications of Metabolomics to Precision Nutrition

“…To catalog these BFIs, members of the FoodBAll consortium systematically reviewed the literature and conducted independent metabolomic studies to identify dozens of BFIs for many classes of foods [17,[48][49][50][51][52]. The FoodBAll consortium also developed protocols and definitions for BFI identification and validation [53,54].…”

Metabolomics Meets Nutritional Epidemiology: Harnessing the Potential in Metabolomics Data

“…The criteria include assessment of biological plausibility, time-response, dose-response, robustness, reliability, stability, and analytical performance of the method used to measure them. A series of systematic reviews for a range of foods including meat, green leafy vegetables, cereal foods, apple, pear and stone fruit were recently published [16][17][18]. It should be noted that many of the food-based metabolomics biomarkers are not specific to individual foods or food groups, and thus accurate quantification of intakes of these foods is not possible.…”