The globalization of the food industry chain and the increasing complexity of the food supply chain present significant challenges for food authenticity and raw material processing. Food authenticity identification now extends beyond mere adulteration recognition to include quality evaluation, label compliance, traceability determination, and other quality-related aspects. Consequently, the development of high-throughput, accurate, and rapid analytical techniques is essential to meet these diversified needs. Foodomics, an innovative technology emerging from advancements in food science, enables both a qualitative judgment and a quantitative analysis of food authenticity and safety. This review also addresses crucial aspects of fully processing food, such as verifying the origin, processing techniques, label authenticity, and detecting adulterants, by summarizing the omics technologies of proteomics, lipidomics, flavoromics, metabolomics, genomics, and their analytical methodologies, recent developments, and limitations. Additionally, we analyze the advantages and application prospects of multi-omics strategies. This review offers a comprehensive perspective on the food chain, food safety, and food processing from field to table through omics approaches, thereby promoting the stable and sustained development of the food industry.

Polyphenols are beneficial to human health because of their bio-activities. In this study, two flavonols quercetin and myricetin with or without heat treatment at 100 °C for 30 min were assessed for their barrier-promoting efficiency in rat intestinal epithelial (IEC-6) cells. The results indicated that the heated and unheated flavonols at dose levels of 2.5–20 μmol L⁻¹ had a nontoxic effect on the cells treated for 24 and 48 h but enhanced the values of cell viability larger than 100% (especially at a dose level of 5 μmol L⁻¹). Moreover, the cells exposed to these flavonols of 5 μmol L⁻¹ for 24 and 48 h had improved barrier integrity compared to the control cells without any flavonol treatment, reflected by enhanced transepithelial electrical resistance and anti-bacterial effect but decreased paracellular permeability and bacterial translocation. Moreover, the results from both mRNA and protein expression verified 1.1–3.4 fold up-regulation of zonula occludens-1, occludin, and claudin-1 that are critical to tight junctions and barrier function of cells. Furthermore, the expression of other two proteins RhoA and ROCK in the treated cells was also down-regulated, demonstrating suppressed Rho activation and consequently barrier promotion via the RhoA/ROCK signaling pathway. Overall quercetin, due to its lower molecular polarity, mostly gave higher barrier-promoting efficiency than myricetin, while the heated flavonols were always less efficient than the unheated counterparts to promote barrier integrity of IEC-6 cells. It is thus highlighted that flavonols can provide barrier-promoting effects on intestinal epithelial cells with a promoting efficiency dependent on flavonol polarity; however, heat treatment especially excessive heat treatment of plant foods might lead to damaged flavonol activity.

Casein hydrolysates (CH) were prepared using papain and modified by the plastein reaction (CH-P) in the presence of extrinsic phenylalanine (CH-P-Phe) or tryptophan (CH-P-Trp). The in vitro protective activity of CH and its modified products against ethanol-induced damage in HHL-5 cells was investigated. The results showed that the modification by the plastein reaction reduced the amino group content of CH. However, the modification by the plastein reaction in the presence of extrinsic amino acids could enhance the antioxidant, proliferative, cell cycle arresting, and anti-apoptosis activity of CH. Biological activities of CH and its modified products in the HHL-5 cells varied depending on the hydrolysate concentration (1, 2, and 3 mg/mL) and treatment time (24, 48, and 72 h). Generally, higher biological activities were found after cell treatment with CH or its modified products at concentration of 2 mg/mL for 48 h compared to other treatments. In addition, CH modified in the presence of tryptophan (CH-P-Trp) showed higher biological activity than that modified in the presence of phenylalanine (CH-P-Phe). Based on the obtained results, it can be concluded that casein hydrolysates with enhanced biological activity and potential health benefits can be produced by papain and the plastein reaction with the incorporation of extrinsic amino acids.