A review on anti-nutritional factors: unraveling the natural gateways to human health

Abstract

Humans are constantly facing multiple health challenges from both communicable and non-communicable diseases that significantly affect their health. Additionally, drug resistance or failure has made the situation even worse and poses serious challenges for researchers to develop new drugs. Hence, to address these problems, there is an urgent need to discover and develop timely and long-term-based therapeutic treatments from different sources. One such approach is harnessing the potential of plant secondary metabolites. Plants have been utilized for therapeutic purposes in addition to being used for nutritional benefits. In the last two decades, plant-based drug developments have been one of the effective means of treating human diseases owing to their multiple functions. More recently, anti-nutritional factors (ANFs) have emerged as one of the important targets for novel plant-based drug development due to their multifaceted and potential pharmacological properties. However, their anti-nutritional properties have been the major setback for their limited success in the pharmacological sector. In this review, we provide an overview of ANFs and their beneficial roles in preventing human diseases with multiple case studies. We also highlight the recent developments and applications of ANFs in the food industry, agriculture, and pharmaceutics with future perspectives. Furthermore, we evaluate meta-analyses on ANFs from the last 30 years in relation to their function in human health benefits. This review is an endeavor to reevaluate the merit of these natural compounds and explore their potential for both human and animal health.

Keywords: anti-nutritional factors (ANF); human diseases; nutritional deficiency; plant-based foods; secondary metabolites.

Figure 1

Schematic representation of critical health benefits possessed by ANFs. The figure displays the role of ANFs in the prevention of serious life-threatening human diseases that negatively affect the quality of life. These diseases include cancers, diabetes, bacterial and fungal infections, certain metabolic diseases, hypertension, and cardiovascular ailments.

Figure 2

Meta-analyses on the role of anti-nutritional factors and their human health benefits in medical science. (A) Year-wise publication records, (B) web of science categories, (C) document types, and (D) countries with the most journal articles published from the past two decades.

Figure 3

The role of ANFs in altering the cell cycle at the G1 phase. The representation also shows the role of ANFs in repressing the formation of activated oxygen species from prostate cancer cells. ANFs such as TI protein were shown to trigger apoptosis by hindering cell growth and eliciting the courses of caspase-3 and -8 cascades as shown in the figure.

Figure 4

Potential targets of food-based amylase class of ANFs on the prevention of hyperglycemic conditions in diabetic patients. The α-amylase inhibitors in whole food grains are usually released during the process of digestion in the GI tract, and these inhibitors form a complex with the α-amylase, hence blocking its activity to limit the hydrolysis of starch and lowering the production of glucose molecules. This mechanism paves the way for amylase inhibitors-based therapeutics in individuals suffering from diabetes to maintain a low glycemic index.