Superfruits: Phytochemicals, antioxidant efficacies, and health effects – A comprehensive review

Abstract

The term "superfruit" has gained increasing usage and attention recently with the marketing strategy to promote the extraordinary health benefits of some exotic fruits, which may not have worldwide popularity. This has led to many studies with the identification and quantification of various groups of phytochemicals. This contribution discusses phytochemical compositions, antioxidant efficacies, and potential health benefits of the main superfruits such as açai, acerola, camu-camu, goji berry, jaboticaba, jambolão, maqui, noni, and pitanga. Novel product formulations, safety aspects, and future perspectives of these superfruits have also been covered. Research findings from the existing literature published within the last 10 years have been compiled and summarized. These superfruits having numerous phytochemicals (phenolic acids, flavonoids, proanthocyanidins, iridoids, coumarins, hydrolysable tannins, carotenoids, and anthocyanins) together with their corresponding antioxidant activities, have increasingly been utilized. Hence, these superfruits can be considered as a valuable source of functional foods due to the phytochemical compositions and their corresponding antioxidant activities. The phytochemicals from superfruits are bioaccessible and bioavailable in humans with promising health benefits. More well-designed human explorative studies are needed to validate the health benefits of these superfruits.

Argentine Patagonia barberry chemical composition and evaluation of its antioxidant capacity

“…(2010, 2014) who used samples from hyper humid to humid climates (south of Chile). To be considered as a superfruit, TPC is expressed as mg GAE/100 g FW, with values between 113.02 and 1,620.00 mg GAE/100 g FW (Chang et al., 2019). Our results show that the calafate could be considered a superfruit due to a TPC of 1,035.03 mg GAE/100 g FW.…”

Exploring the Mechanism of Flavonoids Through Systematic Bioinformatics Analysis

“…Flavonoids are a family of phenolic substances sharing the same backbone structure of 2-pheny1-1,4-benzopyronemay, which are very abundant in nature, being accumulated in regular human diets including flowers ( Zhang and Ma, 2018 ), fruits ( Chang et al, 2018 ), vegetables, tea, wine ( Matveeva et al, 2018 ), and so on ( Szmitko and Verma, 2005 ). With the basic core scaffold, flavonoids have been demonstrated to exhibit relevant biological properties involving strong activity for anti-oxidant ( Pietta, 2000 ), anti-allergy ( Kawai et al, 2007 ; Castell et al, 2014 ), anti-inflammatory ( Nijveldt et al, 2001 ; Serafini et al, 2010 ; Matias et al, 2014 ), anti-microbial ( Cushnie and Lamb, 2005 ), and anti-obesity ( Hughes et al, 2008 ) effects.…”

Phytochemical composition and biological activity of Physalis spp.: A mini-review

“…Recently, P. peruviana is legitimately considered as one of the promising members of the "supefruits" family (Chang et al 2019;Kupska et al 2016). Typically, the term "superfuit" has been introduced with the marketing strategy to promote the health benefits of exotic fruits with less popularity worldwide, which have numerous phytochemicals (such as phenolic acids, flavonoids, proanthocyanidins, coumarins, hydrolysable tannins, carotenoids, and anthocyanins) together with the corresponding antioxidant activities (Chang et al 2019). The berries, the calyces or the whole plants of P. peruviana are an integral part of folk medicine traditions in many countries.…”