The nutritional benefits of pomegranate have attracted great scientific interest. The pomegranate, including the pomegranate peel, has been used worldwide for many years as a fruit with medicinal activity, mostly antioxidant properties. Among chronic diseases, osteoporosis, which is associated with bone remodelling impairment leading to progressive bone loss, could eventually benefit from antioxidant compounds because of the involvement of oxidative stress in the pathogenesis of osteopenia. In this study, with in vivo and ex vivo experiments, we investigated whether the consumption of pomegranate peel extract (PGPE) could limit the process of osteopenia. We demonstrated that in ovariectomized (OVX) C57BL/6J mice, PGPE consumption was able to significantly prevent the decrease in bone mineral density (−31.9%; p < 0.001 vs. OVX mice) and bone microarchitecture impairment. Moreover, the exposure of RAW264.7 cells to serum harvested from mice that had been given a PGPE-enriched diet elicited reduced osteoclast differentiation and bone resorption, as shown by the inhibition of the major osteoclast markers. In addition, PGPE appeared to substantially stimulate osteoblastic MC3T3-E1 alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity at day 7, mineralization at day 21 and the transcription level of osteogenic markers. PGPE may be effective in preventing the bone loss associated with ovariectomy in mice, and offers a promising alternative for the nutritional management of this disease.

Many studies have highlighted the relationship between food and health status, with the aim of improving both disease prevention and life expectancy. Among the different food groups, fermented foods a have huge microbial biodiversity, making them an interesting source of metabolites that could exhibit health benefits. Our previous study highlighted the capacity of raw goat milk cheese, and some of the extracts recovered by the means of chemical fractionation, to increase the longevity of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. In this article, we pursued the investigation with a view toward understanding the biological mechanisms involved in this phenomenon. Using mutant nematode strains, we evaluated the implication of the insulin-like DAF-2/DAF-16 and the p38 MAPK pathways in the phenomenon of increased longevity and oxidative-stress resistance mechanisms. Our results demonstrated that freeze-dried raw goat milk cheese, and its extracts, induced the activation of the DAF-2/DAF-16 pathway, increasing longevity. Concerning oxidative-stress resistance, all the extracts increased the survival of the worms, but no evidence of the implication of both of the pathways was highlighted, except for the cheese-lipid extract that did seem to require both pathways to improve the survival rate. Simultaneously, the cheese-lipid extract and the dried extract W70, obtained with water, were able to reduce the reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in human leukocytes. This result is in good correlation with the results obtained with the nematode.

Gentiana lutea rhizomes are known for their bitter tasting properties conferred by its unique biochemical content. They are currently of interest in phytotherapy, animal nutrition, food processing, cosmetic applications and agroecology. In this study, a NIRS, fluorescence and HS-SPME-GCMS dataset of 55 rhizomes from four different French mountains (Alpes, Jura, Massif Central and Pyrénées) was collected with the aim of assessing the variability of Gentiana lutea composition at different scales. The feasibility of data fusion strategies was demonstrated to be effective in distinguishing the geographical origin of Gentiana lutea roots over a wide area. The results suggest that data fusion methods have the potential to be more effective in the quality of separation of studied sites of Gentiana lutea roots than individual decisions obtained from individual analytical tools. However, to guarantee the geographical origin of Gentiana lutea roots within a single massif using these techniques, environmental factors must be considered.

Fermented foods, including cheeses, have garnered increased interest in recent years for their potential health benefits. This study explores the biological properties of eight French raw-milk cheeses—goat cheese, Saint-Nectaire, Cantal, Bleu d’Auvergne, Roquefort, Comté, Brie de Meaux, and Epoisses—on oxidative processes using both in vivo (Caenorhabditis elegans) and in vitro (human leukocytes) models. A cheese fractionation protocol was adapted to study four fractions for each cheese: a freeze-dried fraction (FDC) corresponding to whole cheese, an apolar (ApE), and two polar extracts (W40 and W70). We showed that all cheese fractions significantly improved Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) survival rates when exposed to oxidative conditions by up to five times compared to the control, regardless of the fractionation protocol and the cheese type. They were also all able to reduce the in vivo accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) by up to 70% under oxidative conditions, thereby safeguarding C. elegans from oxidative damage. These beneficial effects were explained by a reduction in ROS production up to 50% in vitro in human leukocytes and overexpression of antioxidant factor-encoding genes (daf-16, skn-1, ctl-2, and sod-3) in C. elegans.