Work

Upcycling agri-food by-products into redox-active ingredients for skeletal muscle health: From processing chemistry to human translation

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Background Agri-food processing generates chemically complex side streams that retain polyphenols, carotenoids, tocopherols, minerals, and fermentable fiber. Their valorization is attractive for functional-food innovation; however, experimental characterization often emphasizes chemical antioxidant assays, which alone do not establish biological efficacy or substantiate a skeletal-muscle health claim. Scope and Approach This critical review connects food-side-stream chemistry and processing with skeletal-muscle redox physiology, bioavailability, microbiota metabolism, human evidence, safety, sensory design, and sustainability. Emphasis is placed on distinguishing direct evidence from authenticated by-product ingredients from supportive evidence from compositionally related whole-food preparations. Key Findings and Conclusions Contracting muscle requires physiological ROS/RNS for Nrf2-, AMPK/MAPK-, and PGC-1α-dependent adaptation; therefore, successful ingredients should normalize excess oxidant damage without extinguishing adaptive signaling. Grape seed/pomace, pomegranate peel/press residues, berry pomaces, citrus peels, cereal brans, coffee silverskin, and related side streams contain plausible redox-active compounds, but clinical substantiation is uneven. Meta-analyses of polyphenol-rich foods show modest improvements in recovery outcomes (standardized mean differences of 0.23–0.50 for recovery of maximal isometric force between 0 and 96 h), while recent trials with the microbiota-derived ellagitannin metabolite urolithin A provide a mechanistically coherent example of mitochondrial translation; nevertheless, free urolithin A circulates at low-nanomolar concentrations, about three orders of magnitude below the concentrations used to induce mitophagy in vitro. No randomized trial of an authenticated, standardized by-product ingredient with a muscle endpoint (Tier I) was identified. The major bottleneck is not discovering antioxidant-rich biomass but reproducibly converting heterogeneous residues into chemically defined, safe, bioavailable, and consumer-acceptable ingredients. A farm-to-function framework integrating traceability, metabolomics, green extraction, pharmacokinetics, randomized trials, life-cycle assessment, and regulatory substantiation is proposed for the next generation of muscle-health functional foods.

Source: Trends in Food Science & Technology

DOI: 10.1016/j.tifs.2026.106179

Author: Shahidul Islam

Institutions: United States Department of Agriculture, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff

Language: English

Topic: Exercise and Physiological Responses

Subfield: Physiology (medical)

Field: Medicine

Domain: Health Sciences

SDGs: Zero hunger, Good health and well-being, Responsible consumption and production

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $5,440