Research on botanicals is continuing to highlight the fact that they have multiple important benefits in the body. An example of particularly current interest involves the dietary benefits of phenolic compounds. While these compounds are pigeonholed in most consumers’ minds as antioxidants, Emeran Mayer, MD, has described in his book, The Gut-Immune Connection, how polyphenols not only get broken down by the microbiome and create health benefits throughout the body but also “function as prebiotics [i.e., food for our gut microbes] and suppress the growth of unhealthy microbes.”
With a large number of fruits, vegetables, and other botanicals containing significant polyphenolic compounds, this presents significant opportunity for new uses and claims for such ingredients. For example, resveratrol, well-known from wine, grapes, grape juice, blueberries, bilberries, cranberries, and even peanuts and dark chocolate, is a protein-coding gene promoter believed to protect against aging.