“Food” is essentially a big data topic and covers a huge range of subjects. People are often at a loss when trying to systematically understand food. Humans live everywhere in the world and have healthy living know-how that is rooted in each local community. Scientifically elucidating the roles of living things such as “food” and finding their rules are future tasks to create a “long-lived healthy society”.
In countries where people live long, it will be necessary to develop naturally derived food products with added physical and chemical functionalities such as “easy-to-eat” and “fortification with nutrients based on functionality”. Food additives certainly make a significant contribution to the development of such food products. Food additives have many purposes; (a) optimizing the manufacturing process of food products such as curbing of foaming, pH adjustment, and easy of mold release, (b) forming the shape of food products, and providing distinctive texture, (c) creating attractive and delicious-looking food by colors, (d) improving taste and flavor, (e) supplementing nutrients of food, and (f) preserving food quality.
Basic Policy of Economic and Financial Management and Reform 2020 (Basic Policy 2020) (July 7, 2020) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) indicate that “This year's basic policy is to open up the future by boldly implementing significant social changes with a new future goal as the world faces the historic crisis of the new coronavirus epidemic”. How to appropriately use food additives and expand their use are other tasks to be tackled. In a new lifestyle requiring voluntarily refraining from unnecessary and non-urgent movement and travel to the high caution areas, effective use of “Food data science” is a major task as a way to enrich our life such as “how to preserve freshness of foodstuff” and “how to enjoy exotic taste and flavor of food of foreign countries”. When I ate “Durian Candy” which had been given to me in Indonesia a few years ago, just a slight durian flavor (absolutely not rotten) unexpectedly provoked many memories of that time. I thought it was an interesting experience. In this context, “Food data science” on flavor and texture of foodstuff worldwide should be expanded. FFI Reports frequently cover the trend and expansion of an astonishing number of food additives derived from natural origin. New flavor products containing beneficial natural components have been developed based on the results of extensive analysis of fruits.
“Why do natural products attract so much attention?” One of the answers is that natural products have two important aspects. They are products that have been generated over 3.5 billion years of natural history and they are also compounds that have been produced through repeated of biosynthesis and biodegradation. Marine contamination by plastic litter synthetic compounds is increasingly reported in the press articles around the world. If plastic itself can be degraded through the same process as natural material biodegradability, such contamination problems would be solved. However, not surprisingly, the priority has been placed on the durability of synthetic plastic compounds rather than on their degradability. Therefore, non-degradability is an important factor for plastic as an industrial product but satisfying the demand for being degraded when deposited in nature is a conflicting demand. That's why biodegradable plastic is more and more expected as a promising alternative material to synthetic plastic. Meanwhile, natural products have various functions and are degraded by the similar process as natural material biodegradability.
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Wang's nine classifications of constitution for general populations from numerous clinical observations was proved to be clinically useful and also practical for the management of mibyou. The categories of constitution were classified as Gentleness type, Qi-deficiency type, Yang-deficiency type, Yin-deficiency type, Phlegm-wetness type, Wet-heat type, Blood-stasis type, Qi-depression type and Special diathesis type. The characteristics of these mibyou constitutions are as follows: Qi-deficiency type: easy to catch cold, weak breath, shortness of breath, palpitation, low and weak voice, gastroptosis, dizziness, sweaty, easy to feel fatigue; Yang-deficiency type: coldness, loose stool, introverted character; Yin-deficiency type: feverish palms and soles, dry mouth, astringent eye, flushing cheek, and dry skin is usual; Phlegm-wetness type: metabolic syndrome, chest distress, excessive phlegm, and sticky sweating is usual; Wet-heat type: acne and thirsty, halitosis, bitter taste in the mouth, dry feces is usual; Blood-stasis type: pigmentation, dry skin, gloomy complexion, and dim eye sockets is usual; Qi-depression type: sigh, melancholy; Special diathesis type: hypersensitivity, allergic, nasal obstruction, and sneezing, atopic dermatitis. From the viewpoint of data science, in the near future, there will be a great need for the nine classifications of constitution to evaluate the mibyou constitution.

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Constituent profiles of foods are influenced by their cultivars and harvesting conditions, and sometimes change dynamically and unexpectedly by processing as heating and fermentation. Comprehensive constituent analysis without targeting the specific compounds is valuable to understand those complicated variations. Recent advances in the analytical instruments, especially mass spectrometry with high sensitivity and resolution, enable us to gain massive information even from a single analysis. However, handling massive amount of data with high-speed, for example, picking constituent peaks and annotations and aligning of them in multiple data arrays, requires scientific data techniques. Here, we introduce systematic usage of scientific data applications for profiling food composition. This article reviews the application to the data analysis acquired by mass spectrometry as follows: (1) processing of raw data, (2) structural prediction of unknown compounds, (3) visualization of sample discrimination, and (4) database search.

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In recent years, molecular ionization and ion separation methods have made remarkable progress in mass spectrometry and this enables us to measure the mass of a wide range of components from volatile ones such as flavorings for foods, to ones with high boiling points and macromolecules such as sugars, amino acids and proteins. Furthermore, improvement of data processing capability has enabled various analyses including identification, quantification and multivariate analysis of chemical compounds. In this paper, I present some examples of the studies using mass spectrometric imaging of recent interest to visualize mass spectral information and conduct localization analysis of specified components in food microstructure. In addition, I provide examples of studies using various mass spectrometric methods to analyze the wide variety of components in detail in a single meal consisting of multiple foods and clarify the characteristic food components in Japanese meals that contribute to human health by principal component analysis from enormous data sets.

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Perception mechanisms and evaluation systems for oishisa of food have been researched during the past ten years, and recently many researchers have made efforst on quantification of oishisa, but standard methods for all foods have not been developed. In this article, several quantifying approaches for oishisa that the authors have participated in are introduced. First of all, we discussed “what is oishisa”, oishisa evaluation techniques and problems in oishisa evaluation. Then oishisa evaluation devices and an outline of oraganolepic methods are introduced, including discussion of several kinds of relatively new techniques. The examples for IT treatment of expression words for oishisa and neural network (AI) analysis for the relation between emulsified particle size and textural property of emulsion gel are shown. Lastly, several surveys are discussed that look at the relationship between dietary intake of bitter and astringent tasting food and BMI, eating trends for olive products by elderly people using a questionnaire method, and identifying favorites of Asian people for four kinds of persimmon using foreign students in Japan.

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Pressure-assisted thawing (PAT) is a process in which frozen food is thawed under a constant pressure, with the difference in the temperature between the food and the pressure bath being the driving force for this process. This process has been of interest as a quality-ensuring and time-saving process since food is thawed at subzero temperatures with a latent heat smaller than that at atmospheric pressure. This paper discusses the practical use of a PAT method as a measure to reduce the viable number of Escherichia coli in raw beef or Campylobacter in raw poultry. The method uses a two-pressure transmitting media system, an organic solvent in a closed compressible container, and water in the space between the pressure vessel and the container. The method is free from the low temperature brittleness from the stainless steel pressure vessels that is caused by the solvent at subzero temperature. Experimentation with the method has succeeded in reducing the viable number of stationary growth phase cells of Escherichia coli suspended in 1% skimmed milk by 6 log10 units at a pressure of 194 MPa for 20 min. The sterilizing ability is higher than that found in the conventional pressure treatment at 200 MPa, by a factor of ten thousand.

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Although the hydrogen molecule (H₂) has a low redox potential relative to glutathione, ascorbic acid and α-tocopherol, it has been regarded as an inactive molecule i n vivo. However, recently, many investigators have reported that H₂ exerts a reducing power in vivo, and attention has been given to the in vivo physiological role of H₂. We found that in addition to being transported to the liver via the portal vein, H₂ generated from the fermentation of non-digestible saccharides by bacteria in the large intestine diffused into the abdominal cavity from the lumen of the large intestine before transferring to abdominal tissues, particularly adipose tissue. We have examined the antioxidative effect of colonic H₂ and clarified its suppressive effect on oxidative stress and oxidative damage in the liver. Moreover, increased colonic H₂ transferred to adipose tissue by the administration of non-digestible saccharides decreased the mRNA abundance and secretion of interleukin-6, a proinflammatory cytokine, in high fat-fed rats. Colonic H₂ could contribute to the modulation of adipose redox balance by increased regeneration of α-tocopherol radicals to α-tocopherol through electron donation. Therefore, H₂ produced by colonic fermentation would be a pivotal molecule because it would shift the redox balance toward a more reducing state, resulting in contributions to protection against inflammation and disease. Promotion of fermentation in the large intestine by the administration of non-digestible saccharides, accompanied by increased H₂ production, could prevent disease resulting from increased oxidative stress.

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The sense of taste is a chemical sensation due to taste stimuli, which are recognized by taste receptors expressed in taste cells in our oral cavity. In the past two decades, the detailed molecular mechanisms for recognition of taste substances have been elucidated, and scientific knowledge of associated issues has been accumulated in abundance. In this manuscript, recent progress in the field of taste science will be introduced, especially our own results regarding the functional characterization of taste receptors. Evidence from taste science will provide insight into how we perceive the deliciousness of our daily foods.

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In an aging society, there is an urgent need related to swallowing disorders. Eating and swallowing are part of a process in which various oropharyngeal organs cooperate to carry food to the stomach. Therefore, for patients with dysphagia, not only functional training of the oropharyngeal organs but also selection of foods according to their function is important. In recent years, a lot of new nursing care foods have been released. Among them, some are foods designed with the expectation that they will be squeezed between the tongue and palate. However, it is necessary to evaluate how these foods are eaten not only by instrumental measurement but also by biomechanical measurement. Therefore, we focused on the fact that tongue contact with the palate exerts various functions and we have developed a tongue pressure sensor sheet system that can quantitatively evaluate the state of tongue-palate contact. This sensor sheet is as thin as 0.1 mm and has 5 pressure sensitive points. We have used this sensor sheet system to assess tongue movements when performing various functions such as swallowing, chewing, and squeezing foods. As a result, a specific contact sequence between the tongue and the palate was observed according to function. In addition, as a result of simultaneous measurement with videofluorography or electromyography, it was suggested that the tongue and the pharyngeal organs have a cert a in coordination in the order of movement and that they function as a tongue-larynx complex. Furthermore, it was possible to observe the condition of bolus formation depending on the physical properties of a gel sample. In this paper, we summarize our reports about tongue pressure and explain oral food processing with tongue squeezing. Furthermore, we would like to introduce the concept of oral hypofunction and describe the clinical significance of tongue pressure measurement.

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In regard to human food consumption, cooking has expanded the types of food that can be eaten and people have made efforts to eat delicious foods. The basic seasonings in Japan were first salt and then vinegar. We can identify four kinds of seasonings including sake and hishio sauce^∗1 from imperial feasts in the Nara to Heian periods. Hishio sauce developed into miso and soy sauce, and preparing dishes with seasonings by cooks in the Muromachi period resulted in improvement of cooking techniques. In the Edo period, urban culture had remarkably developed with availablity of various cuisines to common people while the role played by seasonings was also excellent. Irisake^{∗ 2}, recently earning a lot of attention, was introduced in “cooking stories” written in 1643 for making various dishes. In the Edo period, miso, vinegar, soy sauce and mirin^∗3 become popular and the cuisines cooked by common people greatly developed accordingly. It can be said that the basic technology of seasonings for Japanese cuisine had matured in the late Edo period.
^∗1) hishio sauce: the ancestor of soy sauce and miso originating in ancient China.
^∗2) iri-sake: Japanese sake mixed with other ingredients and heat to be concentrated.
^∗3) mirin: a kind of sake with high glucose content and used as a seasoning.

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