Fermented foods are ubiquitous in human diets and often lauded for their sensory, nutritious, and health-promoting qualities. However, precise associations between the intake of fermented foods and health have not been well-established. This is in part due to the limitations of current dietary assessment tools that rely on subjective reporting, making them prone to memory-related errors and reporting bias. The identification of food intake biomarkers (FIBs) bypasses this challenge by providing an objective measure of intake. Despite numerous studies reporting on FIBs for various types of fermented foods and drinks, unique biomarkers associated with the fermentation process (“fermentation-dependent” biomarkers) have not been well documented. We therefore conducted a comprehensive, systematic review of the literature to identify biomarkers of fermented foods commonly consumed in diets across the world. After title, abstract, and full-text screening, extraction of data from 301 articles resulted in an extensive list of compounds that were detected in human biofluids following the consumption of various fermented foods, with the majority of articles focusing on coffee (69), wine (69 articles), cocoa (62), beer (34), and bread (29). The identified compounds from all included papers were consolidated and sorted into FIBs proposed for a specific food, for a food group, or for the fermentation process. Alongside food-specific markers (e.g., trigonelline for coffee), and food-group markers (e.g., pentadecanoic acid for dairy intake), several fermentation-dependent markers were revealed. These comprised compounds related to the fermentation process of a particular food, such as mannitol (wine), 2-ethylmalate (beer), methionine (sourdough bread, cheese), theabrownins (tea), and gallic acid (tea, wine), while others were indicative of more general fermentation processes (e.g., ethanol from alcoholic fermentation, 3-phenyllactic acid from lactic fermentation). Fermented foods comprise a heterogeneous group of foods. While many of the candidate FIBs identified were found to be non-specific, greater specificity may be observed when considering a combination of compounds identified for individual fermented foods, food groups, and from fermentation processes. Future studies that focus on how fermentation impacts the composition and nutritional quality of food substrates could help to identify novel biomarkers of fermented food intake.

中文翻译：

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进行系统的审查，以确定发酵食品摄入的生物标志物

发酵食品在人类饮食中无处不在，并因其感官，营养和促进健康的特性而广受赞誉。但是，发酵食品的摄入量与健康之间的精确关联尚未建立。这部分是由于当前依靠主观报告的饮食评估工具的局限性，使其容易出现与记忆有关的错误和报告偏倚。食物摄取生物标志物（FIB）的识别通过提供客观的摄取量来绕过这一挑战。尽管有大量研究报道了各种类型的发酵食品和饮料中的FIB，但与发酵过程相关的独特生物标记（“依赖于发酵的生物标记”）尚未得到充分记录。因此，我们进行了全面，对文献进行系统的综述，以鉴定世界各地饮食中通常食用的发酵食品的生物标志物。经过标题，摘要和全文筛选之后，我们从301篇文章中提取了数据，得出了食用各种发酵食品后在人体生物流体中检测到的大量化合物，其中大多数文章着眼于咖啡（69），葡萄酒（69篇文章），可可粉（62），啤酒（34）和面包（29）。将所有纳入论文中鉴定出的化合物进行合并，并分类为针对特定食品，食品组或发酵过程建议的FIB。除了特定于食物的标记（例如，咖啡用三角龙碱）和食物组标记（例如，用于乳制品摄入的十五烷酸）外，还发现了几种依赖于发酵的标记。其中包括与特定食品发酵过程有关的化合物，例如甘露醇（葡萄酒），苹果酸2-乙基酯（啤酒），蛋氨酸（酸面包，奶酪），茶黄素（茶）和没食子酸（茶，酒），而其他的则表明了更一般的发酵过程（例如，酒精发酵产生的乙醇，乳酸发酵产生的3-苯基乳酸）。发酵食品包括不同种类的食品。虽然发现鉴定出的许多候选FIB是非特异性的，但当考虑为单个发酵食品，食物组和发酵过程鉴定的化合物的组合时，可以观察到更高的特异性。未来研究将重点放在发酵如何影响食物底物的组成和营养品质上，这可能有助于鉴定发酵食物摄入的新生物标志物。