Dietary Antioxidants and Cosmetics

Dietary antioxidants represent the nutrients and secondary bioactive molecules in foods that modulate the oxidation and inflammation signaling pathways. The antioxidant molecules in the human diet constrain cardiovascular, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases and combat the signs of aging. Recently, the cosmetics industry used food antioxidants as an alternative to petroleum-derived ingredients to respond to the consumers' demand for healthy products. New environmental policies and the increased demand for natural antioxidants have enticed researchers to develop valuable methods to recover them even from organic waste (i.e., agricultural waste, food waste, and beached algae). Food antioxidants are employed in topical applications such as "cosmeceuticals" (combining "cosmetic" and "pharmaceutical", these are cosmetics formulated with bioactive ingredients) and oral formulations such as "nutricosmetics" (food supplements containing nutrients and secondary active metabolites combined with cosmetic creams to enhance people's appearance). New devices have been developed to improve the bioaccessibility of these active ingredients. This reprint collected research articles and reviews papers on food antioxidants and delivery systems capable of improving their cosmetic performance. The knowledge about the progress regarding the best methods for their isolation, determining the mechanism of action, the identifying the devices capable of improving their performance may allow the development of new, natural, high-performance cosmetics.