From food plants to functional ingredients for type 2 diabetes: chemotype markers, digestive fate, exposure-informed specifications and sustainable processing

Abstract

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a lifelong cardio-kidney-metabolic disorder in which durable glycaemic control must be achieved under polypharmacy, variable dietary exposure and constrained healthcare budgets. Edible plants embedded in meals worldwide, including vegetables, fruits, teas and culinary spices, provide fibres and bioactives that may complement standard care through gut-directed and systemic mechanisms. Crucially, this synthesis prioritises food-format preparations and food-grade extracts that can realistically be incorporated into diets, rather than purified isolates used as drug surrogates.This review critically synthesises mechanistic, preclinical and human evidence for 23 globally consumed taxa and appraises how processing determines the delivered chemotype, bioaccessibility and site-relevant exposure. Across taxa, the most reproducible human signals cluster around intestinal carbohydrate handling, enteroendocrine modulation and microbiotalinked metabolism, whereas claims requiring portal or systemic concentrations are frequently limited by uncertain marker delivery, digestive fate and short, underpowered trials. A process-to-product perspective is used to connect food-grade extraction and stabilisation with multi-marker specifications, residue control and feasible daily marker exposure. Research priorities include standardised meal challenges and continuous glucose monitoring outcomes, minimal marker panels plus orthogonal fingerprints for batch release, in vitro digestion and biotransformation assays to bridge food-matrix effects, and pragmatic phenotype-stratified randomised controlled trials with explicit co-therapy reporting and interaction-aware safety monitoring. Together, these elements provide a decision-ready scaffold for translating culturally familiar food plants into reproducible functional ingredients and dietary adjuncts for T2DM care.