Post-normal bioactives: reframing food, health, and sustainability

Scientific interest in bioactives in plant-based foods is accelerating, driven by evidence that these compounds can influence health through antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, and gut-modulating pathways. Yet bioactive effects are strongly context-dependent: interactions across food matrices, processing, host physiology, and the gut microbiome complicate standardisation and translation into reliable public guidance, regulation, and product innovation. This Commentary argues that insufficient molecular precision is not the central challenge, but rather the lack of a framework that integrates high-precision methods with uncertainty, contested values, and real-world food-system complexity. We therefore reframe bioactive research through post-normal science (PNS)—a framework for domains where facts are uncertain, values contested, stakes high, and decisions urgent. PNS complements systems biology by making explicit the evidentiary, governance, and stakeholder dimensions that shape which “systems” questions are prioritised, funded, translated, and trusted. We contrast two futures: one that reduces bioactives to isolated pharmacological targets and marketable supplements, and another that treats them as entry points for participatory, context-aware rethinking of food–health–environment systems, including Indigenous and community-based expertise. This Commentary aims to (i) diagnose why translation remains fragile despite increasingly precise characterisation of bioactive molecular structures, (ii) position PNS as a complementary lens to systems biology for governing evidence under uncertainty, and (iii) offer practical principles for designing and translating research across real-world food-system settings.