Gammarid Amphipods as a Novel Source of Health-Promoting Ingredients for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals
Abstract
New health-promoting food ingredients should combine nutritional functionality, traceable production and sustainable sourcing. Freshwater and brackish gammarid amphipods are usually considered ecological indicators, fish prey or invasive crustaceans, but their biochemical and ecological traits also suggest a new food-bioscience perspective. This review reframes gammarids as a candidate epibenthic biomass for the production of bioactive and functional ingredients, with particular emphasis on EPA-rich lipid fractions, protein hydrolysates, chitin-mineral residues and palatability-active crustacean fractions. Available data show that selected gammarids contain meaningful amounts of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, especially EPA, together with protein, minerals and chitinous material. However, wild harvest is unlikely to provide safe or standardized raw material. The central proposition is that gammarid-derived ingredients should be developed through controlled benthic production systems, such as BentoRAS, followed by hygienization, fractionation and safety validation. The most realistic food pathway is not direct consumption of whole animals, but standardized extracts, hydrolysates, lipid blends, microencapsulated powders and supplement-grade fractions. Gammarids may therefore represent a freshwater analogue of krill functionality, but only if production is engineered around biosecurity, contaminant control, oxidative stability, allergen assessment and regulatory approval.
Read the paper
Related studies
- eggNOG 5.0: a hierarchical, functionally and phylogenetically annotated orthology resource based on 5090 organisms and 2502 viruses
- Online Survival Analysis Software to Assess the Prognostic Value of Biomarkers Using Transcriptomic Data in Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer
- OptiType: precision HLA typing from next-generation sequencing data
- Nicotinic Cholinergic System and COVID-19: In Silico Identification of an Interaction between SARS-CoV-2 and Nicotinic Receptors with Potential Therapeutic Targeting Implications
- Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells have three Omega class glutathione S-transferases acting as 1-Cys thiol transferases
- Hemolysis at low blood flow rates: in-vitro and in-silico evaluation of a centrifugal blood pump
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.