NMR-Based Metabolomics for a More Holistic and Sustainable Research in Food Quality Assessment: A Narrative Review

The ability of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) to extract chemical information from a complex mixture is invaluable and widely described in literature. Many applications of this technique in the foodomics field have highlighted how NMR could characterize food matrices, and it can be used all along its “life chain”: from farm to fork and from fork to the digestion process. The aim of this review is an attempt to show, firstly, the potential of NMR as a method based on green chemistry in sample preparation, and then in characterizing the nutritional qualities of agri-food products (with particular attention to their by-products) from a sustainable point of view. For instance, the NMR-based metabolomics approach has been used to enhance the nutritional properties of bio-products waste naturally rich in antioxidants and prebiotics. The reintroduction of these products in the food supply chain as functional foods or ingredients answers and satisfies the consumer demand for more food with high nutritional quality and more respect for the environment.