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This project is issued from a CEPIA-MICA-AlimH commun call (3 Inra scientific departments) to evaluate new opportunities for fermented foods.

Today, numerous epidemiological and clinical proofs show the benefits of consuming high levels of fruits and vegetables (F&V) for preventing cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. F&V have several nutritional advantages: low energetic density, supply of fibers, minerals and vitamins and source of a great variety of bioactive compounds called phytomicronutrients. Among them, polyphenols are the most consumed (approx. 1.2 g/day in France), are found in abundance in F&V and derived beverages and have a large spectrum of biological activities (anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory…).

The issues with fresh fruit juices are that they are rapidly perishable and that thermal processing can trigger undesirable changes leading to a decrease in their health effect but effect on health is proved. The advantage of fermented fruit juices is that lactic acid fermentation is one of the oldest ways of food processing and preservation, increasing the safety, nutritional, sensory and shelf-life properties of foods but health effect is little studied.

FUJI final purpose is to evaluate the nutritional and health value of lactic acid-fermented fruit juices. The project is divided in 6 tasks:

1. Preparation of dietary matrices: fermented apple & pineapple juices. Apple and pineapple have been chosen as part of the most produced and consumed fruits in the world and containing different polyphenols.
2. Analysis of the chemical composition of the dietary matrices: before and after fermentation and in a 50/50 mix.
3. In vivo experiment with human gut microbiota-associated rats
4. Meta-Omics analysis on gut microbiota and oxydative stress and inflammatory response of the host
5. Statistics and integration of meta-omics data
6. Publication

The project regroups 6 INRA partners : Medis (P. Mosoni /coordinator), SQPOV (C. Le Bourvellec), LISBP (V. Anton-Leberre), PFEM-UNH (E. Pujos), UNH (C. Gladine), Micalis (J.M. Chatel) and 2 external partners : La Réunion University (F. Remize) and GenoToul Biostat platform (S. Desjean).