Foodomics technology: promising analytical methods of functional activities of plant polyphenols

Polyphenol compounds are widely found in natural plants and they are attracting a lot of interests in their functional activities including anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, liver-protection, anti-bacteria, neuroprotection, anti-obesity, and other related effects. However, the mechanisms of polyphenolic functional activities are still limited. Although chemical reagent methods have been widely used to study various polyphenol activities, it is difficult to deeply investigate the specific mechanism of polyphenol activities in vivo only by chemical methods. Recently, as a method to discover biomarkers associated with polyphenol activities, foodomics technique including proteomics, metabolomics, genomics, transcriptomics and lipidomics technique was developed to study the mechanisms. In this review, we summarized the worldwide research advances of polyphenolic functional activities using foodomics techniques.