Azo dyes, including Tartrazine, Sunset Yellow, and Carmoisine, are added to foods to provide color, but they have no value with regard to nutrition, food preservation, or health benefits. Because of their availability, affordability, stability, and low cost, and because they provide intense coloration to the product without contributing unwanted flavors, the food industry often prefers to use synthetic azo dyes rather than natural colorants. Food dyes have been tested by regulatory agencies responsible for guaranteeing consumer safety. Nevertheless, the safety of these colorants remains controversial; they have been associated with adverse effects, particularly due to the reduction and cleavage of the azo bond. Here, we review the features, classification, regulation, toxicity, and alternatives to the use of azo dyes in food.

In the past years, consumers have increased their interest in buying healthier food products, rejecting those products with more additives and giving preference to the fresh ones. Moreover, the current environmental situation has made society more aware of the importance of reducing the production of plastic and food waste. In this way and considering the food industry’s need to reduce food spoilage along the food chain, edible coatings have been considered eco-friendly food packaging that can replace traditional plastic packaging, providing an improvement in the product’s shelf life. Edible coatings are thin layers applied straight onto the food material’s surface that are made of biopolymers that usually incorporate other elements, such as nanoparticles or essential oils, to improve their physicochemical properties. These materials must provide a barrier that can prevent the passage of water vapor and other gasses, microbial growth, moisture loss, and oxidation so shelf life can be extended. The aim of this review was to compile the current data available to give a global vision of the formulation process and the different ways to improve the characteristics of the coats applied to both fruits and vegetables. In this way, the suitability of compounds in by-products produced in the food industry chain were also considered for edible coating production.

Seaweeds are an underutilized food in the Western world, but they are widely consumed in Asia, with China being the world’s larger producer. Seaweeds have gained attention in the food industry in recent years because of their composition, which includes polysaccharides, lipids, proteins, dietary fiber, and various bioactive compounds such as vitamins, essential minerals, phenolic compounds, and pigments. Extraction techniques, ranging from more traditional techniques such as maceration to novel technologies, are required to obtain these components. Pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) is a green technique that uses high temperatures and pressure applied in conjunction with a solvent to extract components from a solid matrix. To improve the efficiency of this technique, different parameters such as the solvent, temperature, pressure, extraction time and number of cycles should be carefully optimized. It is important to note that PLE conditions allow for the extraction of target analytes in a short-time period while using less solvent and maintaining a high yield. Moreover, the combination of PLE with other techniques has been already applied to extract compounds from different matrices, including seaweeds. In this way, the combination of PLE-SFE-CO₂ seems to be the best option considering both the higher yields obtained and the economic feasibility of a scaling-up approximation. In addition, the food industry is interested in incorporating the compounds extracted from edible seaweeds into food packaging (including edible coating, bioplastics and bio-nanocomposites incorporated into bioplastics), food products and animal feed to improve their nutritional profile and technological properties. This review attempts to compile and analyze the current data available regarding the application of PLE in seaweeds to determine the use of this extraction technique as a method to obtain active compounds of interest for food industry application.

Macroalgae are known as abundant sources of phytochemicals, which offer a plethora of beneficial biological properties. Besides being the most notable classes of compounds found in macroalgae, phlorotannins, bromophenols, and terpenoids comprise some of the most relevant for their biological properties. Phlorotannins, mainly prevalent in brown algae and structurally characterized as complex polyphenolic compounds derived from phloroglucinol units, possess robust antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antitumor, and cytotoxic activities, modulated by factors such as the degree of polymerization and environmental conditions. Bromophenols, halogenated compounds found in algae and other marine organisms, exhibit significant antioxidant and antiviral properties. Their diverse structures and bromination patterns contribute to their potential as therapeutic and chemical defense agents. Pigments (chemically described as primary terpenoids) play a critical role in light absorption and energy transfer in macroalgae and are divided into three main groups: (i) carotenoids, which are primarily found in brown algae and provide photoprotective and antioxidant benefits; (ii) chlorophylls, known for facilitating the conversion of light into biological energy; and (iii) phycobilins, which are mostly found in red algae and play important roles in light absorption and energy transfer, besides providing remarkable health benefits. Finally, secondary terpenoids, which are particularly abundant in red algae (e.g., the Rhodomelaceae family) are central to cellular interactions and exhibit significant antioxidant, antimicrobial, antidiabetic, and anti-inflammatory properties. This study represents a detailed analysis of the biosynthesis, structural diversity, and biological activities of these macroalgae metabolites, emphasizing their potential biological properties.

Contamination or pollution of our environment has become a real global concern, especially in parallel with the increasing evolution of urbanization and industrialization, which in turn have released a plethora of different pollutants that end up being deposited in soils. It is crucial to investigate solutions that can minimize the extent of damage, and that are cost-effective, feasible and environmentally friendly, to treat a wide variety of contaminants in soils, as well as to detoxify various compounds. Bioremediation is a safe technique that has demonstrated satisfactory results and is easy to apply and maintain. This technique explores the degradation pathways of various biological agents (microorganisms, plants, algae, etc.) to neutralize contaminants. It is based on biodegradation through a complete mineralization of organic pollutants into inorganic innocuous compounds, such as carbon dioxide and water. This review aims to determine the feasibility of bioremediation as a cleanup technology for soils contaminated with pesticides, agrochemicals, chlorinated compounds, heavy metals, organic halogens, greenhouse gases, petroleum hydrocarbons, and many others, either in situ or ex situ. Different bioremediation approaches are described and compared, showing their advantages and drawbacks from a critical point of view. Moreover, both the economic and technical barriers of bioremediation are addressed, along with the outlook for the role of microorganisms in the process, the aim to identify future directions, and the application feasibility of this process.