Revealing the secret of soups' healing power: Nanostructures and their functions

As a major formula in both food and traditional medicine, soup delivers health benefits besides the stomach filling nutrients. The occurrence of non-enzymatic glycation (Maillard reaction) and formation of nanostructures distinguish soups from their raw materials providing a new explanation of soups' bio-functions. The bioactivity and chemical nature of the Maillard reaction products and nanostructures in soups are reviewed. The artificially formed nanoparticles, consisting the purified glycated polyphenol oxidase, provided the first direct evidence of encapsulation and target delivery capacity of the soup nanostructures. The high performance liquid chromatography, coupled with multi-angle laser light scattering, is an effective approach of separating and identifying the bioactive nanostructures. It indicates that the functional and toxicological analysis of soups as either food or medicine should include the vital impacts of nanostructures. The nanostructure provide not only a new perspective of studying the functional traditional food, but also an excellent model for discovery of next generation drugs.