Fruit and vegetable snacks as carriers of probiotics and bioactive compounds: a review

Abstract

Vegetable and fruit snacks emerge as an innovative non-dairy functional food of probiotic carriers and a valuable alternative to consumers with dietary restrictions. However, enriching snacks with probiotics is challenging as several factors may affect cell viability making it difficult to maintain adequate microbial doses at consumption time. This article aimed to review the most recent advances in the design of probiotic fruit and vegetable snacks to provide the current state of knowledge on this cutting-edge topic. In particular, the technologies applied to introduce probiotics into the food matrix, classical and novel drying methods, and strategies to improve microbial survival during processing, storage and gastrointestinal passage, are discussed. Most of the published works report bacterial counts above 7 log cfu g−1 in snacks, which is a proper dose of probiotics to promote health benefits. However, many of these studies did not evaluate the survival rate during storage or considered short periods. The design of fruit- or vegetable-based snacks enriched with probiotics appears to be a worthwhile strategy at laboratory scale but further studies to validate results both at pilot and industrial scale are necessary.