In recent years there has been a growing concern about environmental pollution linked to the generation of agroindustrial waste. The wine industry generates approximately 8.49 million tons of grape pomace per year worldwide; this residue can be used to obtain compounds with biological activity. Grape pomace is a source of anthocyanins, pigments that have antioxidant properties and help prevent cardiovascular disease. The development of sustainable extraction, purification and identification techniques constitutes an important step in adding value to this waste. Therefore, the present research has focused on presenting a review of works carried out in the last years.

Compounds from spices and herbs extracts are being explored as natural antibacterial additives. A plant extract used in traditional folk medicine is Hibiscus sabdariffa L., also known as Roselle. Therefore, the potential use of a phenolic hibiscus extract as antibacterial or natural food preservative was analyzed in vitro and in situ. A phenolic extract was obtained from hibiscus calyces and fractionated, and then the fractions were tested against foodborne pathogen bacteria. Liquid–liquid extraction and solid-phase extraction were used to fractionate the hibiscus extract, and HPLC was employed to analyze the fractions’ phenolic composition. Minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) and minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) were calculated for brute hibiscus phenolic extract, each of the fractions and pure commercial phenolic compounds. Bacteria tested were Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes and Bacillus cereus. The fraction obtained after liquid–liquid extraction presented the best performance of MBC and MIC against the bacteria tested. Furthermore, a hibiscus ethanolic extract was employed as a natural preservative to extend the shelf-life of beef. Microbiological, color and sensory analyses were performed to the meat during the shelf-life test. The application of the phenolic hibiscus extract also showed an increase of the duration of the meat`s shelf life.

Polyphenols, as secondary metabolites from plants, possess a natural antioxidant capacity and biological activities attributed to their chemical and structural characteristics. Due to their mostly polar character, polyphenols present a low solubility in less polar environments or hydrophobic matrices. However, in order to make polyphenols able to incorporate in oils and fats, a transformation strategy is necessary. For the above, the functionalization of polyphenols through chemical or enzymatic lipophilization has allowed the synthesis of phenolipids. These are amphipilic molecules that preserve the natural phenolic core to which an aliphatic motif is attached by esterification or transesterification reactions. The length of the aliphatic chain in phenolipids allows them to interact with different systems (such as emulsions, oily molecules, micelles and cellular membranes), which would favor their use in processed foods, as vehicles for drugs, antimicrobial agents, antioxidants in the cosmetic industry and even in the treatment of degenerative diseases related to oxidative stress