Xenobiotici. Nutraceutici e sesso-genere

The concept of the presence, in food of normal consumption, of “nutraceuticals compounds”, was recently born. Nutraceuticals provide important benefits for human health, not only in conservative, but especially in preventive and protective terms. Of particular interest are the bioactive components of plant origin, like phenolic compounds such as flavonoids, phytoestrogens and resveratrol, lycopene, organosulphur compounds, phytosterols, isothiocyanates and monoterpenes, which have been the subject of both clinical and epidemiological studies to assess the possible health benefits of their intake. The common characteristic of nutraceutical phytocomponents is their antioxidant activity; they can act directly, by inhibiting the production of reactive oxygen species, or indirectly, inducing endogenous antioxidant/detoxifying enzymes. It has been demonstrated that many endogenous antioxidant enzyme systems are also controlled at the gene level by sex hormones, and for this reason the expression and activity of antioxidant/detoxifying enzymes can be considered gender-dependent. Sex-gender may influence not only food choices, but also the different metabolic fate of nutrients and nutraceuticals. In this section we will describe the antioxidant role of estrogens and show the main nutraceuticals able to exert a demonstrated protective action against chronic/degenerative diseases in a sex-gender perspective. Sex-gender studies in nutrition are still lacking, however, experimental and epidemiological data suggest that it is not premature to encourage a greater consumption of colored vegetables by the female population, waiting to have enough experimental data to identify “sex-gender nutraceuticals”.