Secondary metabolites in organic and conventional crops and diets, and their human bioavailability

Summary

The overall objective of the PhD project is to study the impact of growth system on the content of selected and presumably health-promoting bioactive secondary metabolites in certain crops of high abundance in the human diet. Additionally, the project aim is to study the content of selected bioactive secondary metabolites in human diets and discuss their possible health effects based on literature search and selected analysis of human samples from a human intervention study based on the same cultivated crops as mentioned above.
In conclusion, this study showed that the content of presumable health-promoting secondary metabolites was not significantly different between organic and conventional food products, even though cultivation studies are considered as the most well-controlled and valid comparative studies. Hence, the perception about organic food products being healthier than conventional was not supported and can most likely not be attributed the secondary metabolites included in the present study, although further knowledge about the bioavailability is needed. The study broadens the knowledge about organic food products indicating that the selected secondary metabolites (carotenoids, flavonoids, phenolic acids and polyacetylenes) are not of major importance for their expected health effects, which is of interest to both the consumer of organic food products and scientist working in the area of organic agriculture