A Review on Food Fermentation and the Biotechnology of Lactic Acid Bacteria

Fermented foods are among the first processed food products consumed since the development of human civilizations. Food fermentation processes can be categorized by the primary metabolites and microorganisms involved. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are a large group of closely related bacteria that have similar properties such as lactic acid production, which is an end product of the fermentation. Biotechnology is the use of living systems and organisms to develop or make useful products, or any technological applications that uses biological systems, living organisms or derivatives, to make or modify products or processes for specific use. Depending on the tools and applications, it often overlaps with the fields of bioengineering and biomedical engineering. Some of the applications were identified in this paper to include biotechnology in food fermentation to enhance properties such as the taste, aroma, shelf-life, texture and nutritional value of food. When used regularly, LAB fermented foods boost the immune system and strengthen the body in the fight against pathogenic bacterial infections, bacteriocins produced by LAB may become a potential drug candidate for replacing antibiotics in order to treat multiple drugs resistance pathogens in the future. The modern extension of food/feed fermentation technology consists of processes designed to obtain particular compounds using microbial metabolism as the chemical machinery. Thus, LAB fermentation is not only of a major economic importance, and the starting food materials, but it also promotes human health and increase food/feed production in the world