Nutraceutical Insight into Vegetables and their Potential for Nutrition Mediated Healthcare

Abstract

Background: The connection between food and good health is not a new concept. Vegetables are being used as a source of nutrition since long. Dietary active components are essential for the normal functioning of the human body. Methods: The study basically involves all the three categories of research methodologies, including analytic, descriptive and historical. It involves secondary data from scientific reports, books, and journals. Results: Vegetables can be considered as nutraceuticals since they supply bioactive compounds effective in decreasing the risk of many diseases. Vegetables are considered to be protective foods since they contain low calories and higher vitamins and minerals. Vegetables are potentially suitable against civilization diseases, which are caused by the lack of nutrients such as omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants (vitamin E, vitamin C, β-carotene, selenium, zinc, cryptoxanthin, lycopene etc), and other micronutrients. Conclusion: The presence of bioactive compounds like phytochemicals offers nutraceutical values to vegetables. Nutraceutical rich vegetables have been established to have a role in gastrointestinal disorders, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes and other diseases. Vegetables and fruits not only have the potential to stop the growth of disease but also can cure many diseases and boost the immune system.

Genome editing for improving nutritional quality, post-harvest shelf life and stress tolerance of fruits, vegetables, and ornamentals

“…Thus, the incorporation of genome editing in normal breeding practices should enhance the speed of precision crop breeding and improve modern agriculture (Miki et al, 2018). Fruits and vegetables are more nutrient-dense and include more bioactive phytochemicals, which are essential for the global population (Alfa and Arroo, 2019;Fraga et al, 2019;Liskova et al, 2019;Saiwal et al, 2019). Plants experience several environmental factors like dehydration, heat, cold, pathogen, and many other harmful abiotic and biotic stress.…”

Natural nutraceuticals, especially functional foods, their major bioactive components, formulation, and health benefits for disease prevention: an overview

“…Table 1 shows the major classes of functional foods, from the nutraceutical context, and their associated bioactive components/effects. The functional food classification would include beverages (Nutraceutical beverages) (Saeed et al, 2019;Dí az et al, 2020;Bulman et al, 2021), fermented foods (Islam et al, 2019;Vasilean et al, 2021;Yun et al, 2021), fruits (Ellis, 2021;Lim et al, 2021), herbs and spices (Ahmad et al, 2020;Pandey et al, 2022;Chopra et al, 2022), honey (Anfang et al, 2018;Grüter, 2020;Berenbaum and Calla, 2021;Martinez-Armenta et al, 2021), legumes (Barman et al, 2018;Carrera et al, 2021), nuts (Del Gobbo et al, 2015;ARS, 2019;Ros et al, 2021), seafood (fishes) (Te ´ lessy, 2019; Ashraf et al, 2020;Ellis, 2021), seeds (Kawakami et al, 2015;Khosravi-Boroujeni et al, 2017;Robertson, 2017;Suryapal et al, 2021), vegetables (Saiwal et al, 2019;Arya et al, 2019), as well as whole grains (Priebe and McMonagle, 2016;Kelly et al, 2017;Zabolotneva et al, 2022), which will be further discussed in this section. Further illustrating the abovementioned, some vegetables with their associated nutraceutical potentials are presented in Table 2, in terms of plant species, image display, common cultivars and parts commonly used.…”

“…Vegetables are considered as nutraceuticals given the many essential nutrients and phytochemicals present. Generally low in calories and high in vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber, and important phytochemicals, vegetables either eaten raw or cooked (Saiwal et al, 2019) and regularly consumed can help decrease in incidence of cardiovascular diseases, stroke, cancer, etc (Büchner et al, 2010). Vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, pumpkin, kale, spinach, scent leaves, etc., contain antioxidants, including vitamin A, C, and E, as well as polyphenols (Büchner et al, 2010).…”

“…Vegetables also contain antinutrients and toxins like oxalic acid, enzyme inhibitors (of protease, amylase, cholinesterase, etc. ), tannins, cyanide and precursors of cyanide, α-chaconine, α-solanine, etc, which can be managed by processing methods (Saiwal et al, 2019). Many phytochemicals in vegetables have excellent nutraceutical properties, ranging from the carotenoids in carrot, lycopene in tomato, etc (Jeong et al, 2013).…”

Can gene editing reduce postharvest waste and loss of fruit, vegetables, and ornamentals?

“…The focus on global food security, however, is usually on starch-rich cereals and ignores or underestimates the vital importance of horticultural crops. These perishable commodities are often nutrient-dense with bioactive phytochemicals, the consumption of which is needed for a healthy and thriving population 3 – 6 . However, an uncomfortable fact is that in addition to losses that may result from disease, drought, extremes of temperature, and other environmental stresses experienced in the field, an additional 25–40%—an average of 33%—of all fruit and vegetables produced globally are never eaten after harvest 7 .…”