Traditional fermented foods harbor microbes that transform raw food components, improving their nutritional, shelf life, organoleptic, and health-promoting characteristics. Fermented foods are an important conduit of contact between bioactive components that act like antigens and the human body system. Versatile microbes in traditional fermented foods are associated with many health-promoting end-products, including dietary fatty acids and inherent fermenting microbial cells. Evidence shows that dietary fatty acid components regulate genes in a hormonally dependent manner, either directly via specific binding to nuclear receptors or indirectly by changing regulatory transcription factors. Fatty acids are implicated in anti-inflammatory, anti-obesogenic, immunoregulatory, cardioprotective, etc., activities. Challenges with scaling the production of traditional fermented foods stem from losing effective consortiums of microbial groups and the production of differential end-products. Industrialists scaling the production of traditional fermented foods must overcome safety and consistency challenges. They need to combine processes that lessen the advent of public health issues and introduce omics technologies that identify and maintain effective consortium groups, prune genes that code for toxic products, and inculcate microbes with additional beneficial characteristics. Incorporating omics in production will avail the benefits of traditional fermented foods to a larger population that craves them outside their native areas.

Background/Objectives: The present study aimed to investigate the effects of frozen (−18 °C) and refrigerated (4 °C) storage conditions on several beef bottom round quality parameters. Methods: Fresh beef bottom round samples were stored under both frozen (−18 °C) and refrigerated (4 °C) conditions. For frozen samples, the pH, color, cooking loss, thawing loss, centrifugal loss, drip loss, moisture content, shear force, TBARS and TPA were measured at 0, 30 and 60 days. For refrigerated samples, the pH and color were analyzed at 0, 1, 3, 5 and 7 days, and the differential metabolites were also identified based on the VOCs analysis combined with multivariate statistical analysis. Results: The surface color (L*, a*, and b*) of the beef bottom round became darker during both the frozen and refrigerated periods of prolonged storage. The samples’ pH significantly declined (p < 0.05) during the frozen storage but alternated (initially reduced and then increased) under refrigerated conditions. Additionally, the frozen treatment led to a significant change (p < 0.05) in the texture profile. The thiobarbituric acid reactive substance (TBAR) values, shear force, cooking loss, thawing loss, centrifugal loss, and drip loss increased significantly with an extended frozen storage time, while the moisture content was significantly lower (p < 0.05). Moreover, nine volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were identified as potential determinants of beef bottom quality during refrigerated storage. Conclusions: The findings can contribute to a deeper understanding of quality variations during frozen storage and refrigerated storage, and provide new thoughts to improve preservation and storage strategies for the beef bottom round.

Background: Fingerprinting Chinese red prickly ash ( Zanthoxylum bungeanum or Dahongpao) samples helped establish baseline qualities and components. These data will provide valuable insights into determining the extent to which cultivation practices and locations may affect a plant’s output, providing insight into maximizing its agricultural potential and ensuring consistent quality. Methods: In this paper, we evaluated prickly ash samples from eight regions, all in the Shandong, Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces, using Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) technologies. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC‐MS) was used to analyze the volatile components from prickly ash extract and powder samples, and they were compared with the NIST database. Results: Data from sample analysis yielded 91 volatile flavour components. Lastly, 14 compounds were identified as fingerprints with harvest site bias based on the GC‐MS data, principal component analysis (PCA), hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS‐DA) models. Conclusion: Data from this comprehensive analysis contributes to the growing body of knowledge regarding the quality of prickly ash samples. Our findings underscore the critical role that cultivation practices play in the quality of plants—which could influence both traditional medical and modern culinary art usages.

Four sweet cherry cultivars (FuChen, Redlight, Huangmi, and Samituo) grown in northern China were used to produce sweet cherry wines with two alcohol levels. Physicochemical properties, antioxidant capacity, and volatile aroma compounds of the wines were systematically investigated. The results showed that wine from the Redlight cultivar with an alcohol content of 11.22 ± 0.17% contained the highest phenolic content and also exhibited the strongest antioxidant capacity as measured by DPPH and ABTS•⁺ assays. Meanwhile, wine from the FuChen cultivar with an alcohol content of 11.45 ± 0.03% had the highest anthocyanin content and showed the strongest FRAP antioxidant activity. Orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) based on electronic nose data clearly distinguished the eight sweet cherry wine samples from different cultivars. A total of 58 volatile compounds were identified by headspace solid-phase microextraction coupled with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (HS-SPME-GC-MS). Both principal component analysis (PCA) and OPLS-DA revealed clear differences among the sweet cherry wines based on their volatile composition. Using variable importance in projection (VIP) scores > 1 and relative odor activity values (ROAVs), the key aroma compounds contributing to the characteristic aroma profiles of the eight sweet cherry wines were identified as ethyl butanoate, isoamyl acetate, isoamyl hexanoate, methyl decanoate, ethyl decanoate, ethyl benzoate, methyl salicylate, citronellol, and eugenol. These findings provide important guidance for the selection of raw materials to improve the production of sweet cherry wines with targeted alcohol levels.