The course aims to provide the skills on the methods currently used in laboratories to evaluate the quality of a food and its health benefits. The lectures will describe the different approaches used by highlighting advantages and limitations. We will describe new protocols validated by the European scientific community focusing on the in vitro cell culture. Moreover, new techniques of ex vivo analysis and studies on healthy subjects cohorts will be showed. Finally, inside module 1, new methods for the nutritional improvement of plant foods will be described, with particular attention to the process of fermentation and to the use of mycorrhizae. The module 2 lessons aim to give knowledge about the methods currently used in laboratories to evaluate the in vivo effects of nutraceuticals against more common pathologies. The lectures will describe the different in vivo approaches to study the mechanisms of action and the toxicity of nutraceuticals through the evaluation of their interaction with the drug metabolism. Particular attention will pay about gut microbiota and the employment of probiotics and prebiotics as prevention and therapy of pathologies linked to dysbiosis. Moreover, the subject about the use of nutraceuticals as prevention and therapy of cancer will be present