A Systematic Review (Before 01 February 2024) on the Health Benefits of Kimchi

Citation: Low, MT, Cheng, KW, Aw, C, Lee, LC, Burhanudin, N, Ng, HT, Ong, P, Tan, BKH, Ling, MHT. 2024. A Systematic Review (Before 01 February 2024) on the Health Benefits of Kimchi. Acta Scientific Nutritional Health 8(9): 55-65.

Link to [abstract].

Here is the permanent [PDF] and [Dataset] links to my archive.

Kimchi, a popular fermented salted vegetable from Korea, has been suggested to have potential benefits in weight and fat loss, gut modulation, improvement in gastrointestinal disorders, and possible reduction in formation of colon adenomas. There were some reviews on specific health benefits of kimchi such as gut health and weight loss, but in recent years there are some research that look at other kimchi health benefits such as bone loss, memory loss, allergy, and inflammation etc. Thus, a systematic review was conducted on this topic of interest. PubMed was the sole database used and 30 out of 158 articles were filtered through exclusion criteria. The articles were categorized into three main themes with fourteen subthemes: (i) Weight loss and lipid metabolism, (ii) Gastrointestinal disorders and diseases, and (iii) other health benefits. However, a main limitation of this review will be that more than half of the articles were of animal studies. Further research on human studies is required to validate and ascertain the current health benefits confer by kimchi.