Nonthermal Technologies for Fruit and Vegetable Juices and Beverages: Overview and Advances

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the design of novel nonthermal processing systems that minimally modify sensory, nutritional, and functional properties of fruit and vegetable juices and beverages. The benefits of nonthermal treatments are strongly dependent on the food matrix. Thus, an understanding of the effects that these technologies exert on the properties of juices and beverages is important to design and optimize technological parameters to produce value-added products. This review covers research on nonthermal electrical treatments, high pressure processing, ultrasound, radiation processing, inert gas treatments, cold plasma, and membrane processing. Advances towards optimization of processing conditions, and combined technologies approaches have been also extensively reviewed. This information could be useful to: (1) manage processing systems and optimize resources; (2) preserve nutritional value and organoleptic properties, and (3) provide processing conditions for validation of these technologies at the industrial scale.