Editorial: Remodeling Composition and Function of Microbiome by Dietary Strategies - Functional Foods Perspective

Microbes inhabiting the human gastrointestinal tract have been under the spotlight during the last decade, given the multiple associations detected between specific microbiota profiles and health status. Diet is widely recognized as the primary environmental variable shaping the intestinal microbiota in humans. Therefore, the study of diet-microbiota-host interactions deserves special attention to provide clues to several diseases, including cognitive, metabolic, and immune ones. In a similar manner, the investigation of the molecular cross-talk between host cells and microbes in a particular nutritional environment also serves as the foundation for design of innovative therapeutic strategies based on probiotics, prebiotics, and synbiotics. For instance, a recent investigation based on resistant starch suggests that discrete dietary fiber structures can be used to target the production of short-chain fatty acids (1), the major microbiota-derived effector molecules known to have a wide range of action on host health (2). On the other hand, the gut microbiota has been disclosed to modulate the effect of dietary fiber on host health, supporting the notion that there is no one-fits-all diet in the way to seek cost-effective nutritional strategies for health improvement and weight control (3). Anyhow, consensual benefits for human health in microbiota-targeted dietary interventions are still perceived, pointing out, for instance, fermented foods as attenuators of inflammation, and modulators of gut microbiota (4). The aim of the Frontiers in Nutrition Research Topic (RT) “Remodeling Composition and Function of Microbiome by Dietary Strategies—Functional Foods Perspective” was to assemble clinical and pre-clinical studies deciphering the microbiome-driven effects on human health of innovative functional foods based on probiotics, prebiotics or synbiotics, as well as dietary supplements. We provide an overview of this RT, including five original research articles and two review articles.