Food Quality and Safety assessment: a way of improving sustainability in the Food Supply Chain

Sustainability has become a great concern in the food industry as food waste and losses have been globally recognized among the most important manifestations of its inefficiencies leading to disposal problems, severe pollution and loss of valuable biomass and nutrients. Since it has been established that a huge part of food products is waste at the end of the supply chain i.e. at retailers and consumers level, turning food by-products into edible materials is one of the most interesting strategies for reducing food waste. In addition, consumers having access to accurate information about food quality and safety can considerably improve their consumption and their attitude towards waste production. By providing information on food quality and safety, this work aims to support two key players in the possible actions for effective improvement of sustainability in the food supply chain: the consumer and industry, in this process which is increasingly crucial for the food industry. Indeed, we provided information to give a careful communication about food product risk and benefits to consumers on the products the daily consume as a strategy to increase food consumption and reduce waste. Also, we studied the chemical composition of food waste in order to recover high values compounds and thus reducing their impact in the food industry. This objective was achieved by: • Evaluating the nutritional profile as well as the physical and sensory parameters of food products considered to have high nutritional value content to give a clear and concise information to the consumer about the product they usually consume. • Applying easy and sustainable techniques to give a broad chemical characterization of their macronutrients and micronutrients but also for routine checks in the company. • Applying innovative and sensitive analytical technics to evaluate the safety of seafood products. • Recovering high value compounds from less valorised food waste and understand the time of their accumulation to provide data to the food industry on their by-products and encourage them to move towards a circular economy perspective. After presenting in this first section (Section A), an overview of the topic as well as the objectives of the thesis, the Section B will focus on the studies aimed to give quality and safety characterization of fish and seafood products to communicate the appropriate risks and benefits to consumers as a strategy to increase food consumption and reduce wastage: after giving a brief introduction about fish and seafood quality and safety (Chapter 1.B), we will present our works on the chemical characterization and impact of different cooking methods on nutritional parameters and the safety of the mostly consumed shrimps in Italy (Chapter 2.B) and the assessment of the quality, nutritional profile, and safety of sea bream (Sparus Aurata) from two sides of the Adriatic Sea (Chapter 3.B) . Later in the Section C, we will provide quality data on grapevine leaves, the less valorise waste of grapevine industry with the aim of reinserting them in a circular economy process (Chapter 1.C). We will end by giving the mains conclusions arising from these studies and highlight some futures perspectives in the Section D.