Polyphenols, the new frontiers of prebiotics

There is a growing interest in the identification of molecules capable to promote health and with a concurrent potential for technological applications. Prebiotics are functional ingredients naturally occurring in some plant and animal foods that since many decades stimulated considerable attention from the pharmaceutical and food industries due to their positive health effects. Together the well-known biomolecules with ascertained prebiotic effect, in last year new molecules were finally recognized as prebiotics, so capable to improve the health of an organism, also through the positive effect exerted on host microbiota. Among the so-called prebiotics, a special mention should be given to polyphenols, probably the most important, or at least among the most important secondary metabolites produced by the vegetal kingdom. This short chapter wants to emphasize polyphenols and, after briefly describing the individual microbiome, to illustrate how polyphenols can, through their influence on the microbiome, have a positive effect on the health of the individual in general, and on some pathologies in particular, for which the role of a bad status of the individual microbiome has been definitively established.