ANTIOXIDANT COMPONENTS PRESERVATION IN VEGETABLES UNDER MICROWAVES PROCESSING
Special Symposium - Innovations in Food Technology (LMC Congress)
Innovations in Food Technology - Poster Session (LMC/Food - P1)
Keywords: food, vegetable, thermal treatment, microwave, antioxidants.
Anna Angela Barba1*, Antonella Calabretti2, Matteo d’Amore1, Anna Lisa Piccinelli1, Luca Rastrelli1
1Dipartimento di Scienze Farmaceutiche, Università di Salerno, via Ponte don Melillo, 84084 Fisciano (SA) ITALY - * aabarba@unisa.it – tel. +39 089969240 fax +39 089969602
2 Dipartimento dei Materiali e delle Risorse Naturali, Sezione di Merceologia, Biologia farmaceutica e Alimenti, Università degli Studi di Trieste, via A. Valeri, 6, 34127 Trieste ITALY
Fruits and vegetables are considerable sources of natural antioxidant components useful in the human diet for their health benefits. These antioxidants (carotenoids, vitamins, flavonoids, other phenolic compounds etc.) provide protection against harmful free radicals and have been strongly associated with reduced risk of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes. To consume or to increase their shelf-life, fruits and vegetables are undergone to specific treatments, which can consist in minimal handling or deep transformations. In particular, vegetables require treatments (blanching, cooking, crisping etc.) necessary to obtained edible foods in terms of digestibility, palatability, and softening features.
Depending on the methods which are used to process the vegetables, using low or high temperatures, physical (structural and morphologic modification such us shrinkage) or chemical (degradation or losses of sensitive nutrients such us protein, vitamin, aroma etc.) alterations are possible. Many current researches in food technology concern, in particular, novel thermal treatments, such as dielectric heating, to obtain processed products that keep more of their original characteristics. The common goal is the development of unit operations (baking, drying, freeze-drying, sterilization, etc.) that minimize the adverse effects of processing and reduce running costs.
Aim of this study is to investigate the effects of different thermal treatments (traditional and innovative) applied in cooking operations of vegetable matrix (pumpkin, Cucurbita maxima). Being the cooking operation a process that involves simultaneous heat and mass transfer, the role of convective (in water boiling and water steaming methods) and radiative (microwaves method) heat transport phenomena are related to the final quality of the processed vegetable. The intent is to emphasize whenever dielectric heating is suitable for foods processing in terms of nutritional factor preservation and energetic sustainability since, actually, packaged pre-cooked and cooked foods have an enormous market success as microwaveable preparations (soups, salads, etc.). The work has been focused on the change of carotenoids, phenolics, hydrosoluble vitamins (especially ascorbic acid) contents and components of the volatile fraction. The content of α-carotene, βcarotene, licopene and lutein has been analysed by the high performance liquid chromatography with diod array (HPLC-DAD), after the application of different baking methods on the pumpkin wherease the volatile fraction analysis has been performed using the advanced on-line technique of dynamic headspace coupled with gaschromatograph-mass spectrometry (DHS-GC-MS).
Presented Wednesday 19, 13:30 to 15:00, in session Innovations in Food Technology - Poster Session (LMC/Food - P1).
