Food-derived extracellular vesicles modulate ferroptosis: Implications for functional food development and healthy...

Food-derived extracellular vesicles (FDEVs) from plant, dairy, and microbial sources are emerging as bioactive nanostructures with increasing relevance to food science, nutrition, and functional food design. This review summarizes current knowledge on the occurrence of FDEVs in foods, source-dependent isolation and purification strategies, physicochemical characterization, bioavailability, and stability during processing and storage, with an emphasis on how these features shape their potential to modulate ferroptosis. Available evidence suggests that FDEVs may influence iron homeostasis, lipid peroxidation, antioxidant defense, and redox signaling through their bioactive cargo including miRNAs, lipids, proteins, and small molecules; however, most support currently comes from cell and animal models. We further discuss translational issues that are central to food applications, including raw-material variability, scalable manufacturing, quality control, gastrointestinal fate, safety evaluation, and regulatory classification. Overall, FDEVs represent a promising research direction at the interface of food science and health, but stronger mechanistic validation, standardized production workflows, and human evidence are still needed before robust functional food claims can be supported.