HPP of fruit and vegetable products: Impact on quality and applications

Abstract

The demand for high-quality, fresh-like, and nutritious plant-derived foods has been aroused in the 21st century, due to accumulated evidence correlating health benefits to the ingestion of plant-based foods (Murakami & Ohnishi, 2012; Raskin et al., 2002; Xia et al., 2018), particularly fruits and vegetables. According to epidemiologic studies, high intakes of fruit and vegetable products (F&VP) contribute to a reduced risk of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and many cancers (Riboli & Norat, 2003). Health benefits of F&VP are closely linked to multiple bioactive phytochemicals, which act in an additive and synergistic way (Liu, 2003). However, F&VP are highly perishable and for the extension of the shelf life, thermal treatments such as pasteurization and sterilization tend to result in the decomposition and transformation of micronutrients, particularly for the heat-sensitive components (Barba, Esteve, & Frigola, 2010; Barba, Esteve, & Frígola, 2012) although these processing approaches are a well-established practice for food preservation. As an alternative, high-pressure processing (HPP), also referred to as high hydrostatic pressure (HHP), is considered as one of the most successfully commercialized emerging nonthermal technologies in the last two decades. Although the application of this technology in food products was reported at the end of the 19th century, the need of advances in technology for manufacturing apparatuses at industrial scale allowed its commercial application only since 1990 with the production of fruit jams (Demazeau & Rivalain, 2011; Misra et al., 2017). The most impressive advantage of HPP is the potential to inactivate microbial load while exerting rather minimal effects on nutritional and organoleptic properties of food products. This is the main reason of the success of HPP for the preservation of F&VP.