Flaxseed (Linum usitatissimum L.) has gained worldwide recognition as a health food because of its abundance in diverse nutrients and bioactive compounds such as oil, fatty acids, proteins, peptides, fiber, lignans, carbohydrates, mucilage, and micronutrients. These constituents attribute a multitude of beneficial properties to flaxseed that makes its use possible in various applications, such as nutraceuticals, food products, cosmetics, and biomaterials. The importance of these flaxseed components has also increased in modern times because of the newer trend among consumers of greater reliance on a plant-based diet for fulfilling their nutritional requirements, which is perceived to be hypoallergenic, more environmentally friendly, sustainable, and humane. The role of flaxseed substances in the maintenance of a healthy composition of the gut microbiome, prevention, and management of multiple diseases has recently been elucidated in various studies, which have highlighted its importance further as a powerful nutritional remedy. Many articles previously reported the nutritive and health benefits of flaxseed, but no review paper has been published reporting the use of individual flaxseed components in a manner to improve the techno-functional properties of foods. This review summarizes almost all possible applications of flaxseed ingredients in food products from an extensive online literature survey; moreover, it also outlines the way forward to make this utilization even better.

Introduction: Dietary medicinal plants are among the most sought-after topics in alternative medicine today due to their preventive and healing properties against many diseases.Aim: This study aimed to extract and determine the polyphenols from indigenous plants extracts, i.e., Mentha longifolia, M. arvensis, Tinospora cordifolia, Cymbopogon citratus, Foeniculum vulgare, Cassia absus, Camellia sinensis, Trachyspermum ammi, C. sinensis and M. arvensis, then evaluate the antioxidant, cytotoxicity, and antimicrobial properties, besides enzyme inhibition of isolated polyphenols.Methods: The antioxidant activity was evaluated by DPPH, Superoxide radical, Hydroxyl radical (OH^.), and Nitric oxide (NO^.) scavenging activity; the antidiabetic activity was evaluated by enzymatic methods, and anticancer activity using MTT assay, while the antibacterial activity.Results: The results showed that tested medicinal plants’ polyphenolic extracts (MPPE) exhibited the most significant antioxidant activity in DPPH, hydroxyl, nitric oxide, and superoxide radical scavenging methods because of the considerable amounts of total polyphenol and flavonoid contents. UHPLC profile showed twenty-five polyphenol complexes in eight medicinal plant extracts, categorized into phenolic acids, flavonoids, and alkaloids. The main polyphenol was 3-Feroylquinic acid (1,302 mg/L), also found in M. longifolia, C. absus, and C. sinensis, has a higher phenolic content, i.e., rosmarinic acid, vanillic acid, chlorogenic acid, p-coumaric acid, ferulic acid, gallic acid, catechin, luteolin, 7-O-neohesperideside, quercetin 3,7-O-glucoside, hesperidin, rutin, quercetin, and caffeine in the range of (560–780 mg/L). At the same time, other compounds are of medium content (99–312 mg/L). The phenolics in C. sinensis were 20–116% more abundant than those in M. longifolia, C. absus, and other medicinal plants. While T. cordifolia is rich in alkaloids, T. ammi has a lower content. The MTT assay against Caco-2 cells showed that polyphenolic extracts of T. ammi and C. citratus had maximum cytotoxicity. While M. arvensis, C. sinensis, and F. vulgare extracts showed significant enzyme inhibition activity, C. sinensis showed minor inhibition activity against α-amylase. Furthermore, F. vulgare and C. sinensis polyphenolic extracts showed considerable antibacterial activity against S. aureus, B. cereus, E. coli, and S. enterica.Discussion: The principal component analysis demonstrated clear separation among medicinal plants’ extracts based on their functional properties. These findings prove the therapeutic effectiveness of indigenous plants and highlight their importance as natural reserves of phytogenic compounds with untapped potential that needs to be discovered through advanced analytical methods.

Flaxseed consumption (Linum usitatissimum L.) has increased due to its potential health benefits, such as protection against inflammation, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases. However, flaxseeds also contains various anti-nutritive and toxic compounds such as cyanogenic glycosides, and phytic acids etc. In this case, the long-term consumption of flaxseed may pose health risks due to these non-nutritional substances, which may be life threatening if consumed in high doses, although if appropriately utilized these may prevent/treat various diseases by preventing/inhibiting and or reversing the toxicity induced by other compounds. Therefore, it is necessary to remove or suppress the harmful and anti-nutritive effects of flaxseeds before these are utilized for large-scale as food for human consumption. Interestingly, the toxic compounds of flaxseed also undergoes biochemical detoxification in the body, transforming into less toxic or inactive forms like α-ketoglutarate cyanohydrin etc. However, such detoxification is also a challenge for the development, scalability, and real-time quantification of these bioactive substances. This review focuses on the health affecting composition of flaxseed, along with health benefits and potential toxicity of its components, detoxification methods and mechanisms with evidence supported by animal and human studies.

Lignans are known dietary polyphenols found in cereals, plants and seeds.