Food-derived extracellular vesicles: processing sensitivity, structural integrity, and implications for dietary...

Food-derived extracellular vesicles (FDEVs) are nanoscale membrane-bound structures naturally present in plant- and animal-derived foods, carrying diverse bioactive components including lipids, proteins, small RNAs, and metabolites. Increasing evidence suggests that FDEVs may contribute to dietary bioactivity; however, their physiological relevance remains difficult to establish due to the limited understanding of how food processing and gastrointestinal conditions influence their biological functions. Recent studies have highlighted that food processing can reshape multiple aspects of FDEV properties, including membrane integrity, particle characteristics, aggregation behavior, and cargos accessibility. These processing-induced alterations may determine the stability, transformation, and biological availability of FDEVs during gastrointestinal digestion and subsequent interactions with host tissues and microbiota. Nevertheless, current investigations often examine processing effects, digestive fate, and biological outcomes in separate experimental systems, resulting in a lack of integrated understanding of structure-function relationships under physiologically relevant conditions. This review critically evaluates the current knowledge regarding the impact of food processing on FDEV structure, gastrointestinal fate, and potential bioactivities. Particular attention is given to the challenges associated with dose relevance, vesicle characterization, biodistribution assessment, and the interpretation of cargos-mediated effects. By integrating evidence across processing, digestion, and biological response studies, this review proposes a processing-digestion-bioactivity framework as a conceptual model for organizing current evidence, identifying knowledge gaps, and guiding future studies toward physiologically meaningful mechanisms.