Fermented products have been gaining a notable importance in recent years due to the health benefits that they can provide
in relation to the initial unfermented food matrix, i.e. in the enhancement of nutrients, effect on glucose metabolism and
bioactivity, the presence of probiotics in some foods. The paper gives a current analysis of the fermented food/beverage and
health relationship studies present in the literature and it is based on a literature quantitative analysis approach. VOSviewer
software was utilized to extract and elaborate bibliometric data. 1504 publications ranged from the year 1970 to 2022 were
retrieved by literature search and were collectively cited in 25,868 documents. The subject areas mainly covered are: “Agricultural
and Biological Sciences”, “Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology”, “Immunology and Microbiology”
and “Medicine”. 1148 terms, in total, are identified and the top recurring terms on the fermented food/beverage and health
research are: metabolism, lactobacillus, food microbiology, lactic acid, animals. The functionality of fermented foods are here
explored. Innovation is represented towards obtaining specific fermented foods (i.e. yogurts), by changing the fermentation
conditions, or by adding or removing compounds that alter the fermentation, and thus, with the improvement of technologies
like nanotechnology, targeted nutrition and others, it is expected that fermented food will consolidate their position in
the food market.
The authors are grateful to the Foundation for
Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through
national funds FCT/MCTES to the CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020). M.
Carocho and S. Heleno thank FCT, for their individual employment
program-contract (CEECIND/00831/2018, CEECIND/03040/2017),
while L. Barros thanks FCT, through the institutional scientific employment
program-contract.
