Recent advances in extracting phenolic compounds from food and their use in disease prevention and as cosmetics

Phenolic compounds in plants are essential components of human nutrition, which provide various health benefits. However, some missing links became the research in phenolic compounds structures and potential applications in a challenging work. Despite universal extraction methods with mixtures of different organic solvents are generally adopted in the analysis of phenolic compounds, a need for establish a specific procedure is still open. The great heterogeneity in food and food by-products matrices and the lack of standardized methods which combine chromatographic with spectrophotometric techniques to calculate the amount of phenolic compounds joined with the absence of specific standards hamper to accurate know the real amount of phenolic compounds. Indeed, the high complexity in nature and chemistry of phenolic compounds clearly difficult to establish a daily intake to obtain certain healthy outcomes. Hence, despite the potential of phenolic compounds to use them in cosmetic and healthy applications have been widely analyzed, some concerns must be considered. The chemical complexity, the interactions between phenolic compounds and other food components and the structural changes induced by food processing joined with the lack in the understanding of phenolic compounds metabolism and bioavailability undergo the need to conduct a comprehensive review of each factors influencing the final activity of phenolic compounds. This paper summarizes the potential of phenolic compounds for disease prevention and cosmetics production, as well as their many other uses derived from their antioxidant activity. This paper illustrates the potential of phenolic compounds for disease prevention and cosmetics production, as well as their many other uses derived from their antioxidant activity.