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Exploring Bioactive Compounds from Fruit and Vegetable By-Products with Potential for Food and Nutraceutical Applications

Summary

This review explores how food waste from fruit and vegetable processing can be transformed into valuable health supplements and functional foods. By-products like peels, seeds, and leaves contain powerful compounds with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Modern extraction techniques can efficiently recover these compounds in environmentally friendly ways, making it possible to create nutritious supplements while reducing food waste and supporting sustainable food production.

Background

Fruit and vegetable processing generates substantial waste including peels, seeds, pomace, and leaves that are typically discarded. These by-products are rich sources of bioactive compounds such as polyphenols, carotenoids, dietary fibers, glucosinolates, phytosterols, and essential oils with proven health benefits.

Objective

To provide a comprehensive review of bioactive compounds in fruit and vegetable by-products, green extraction technologies for their recovery, and their application in functional foods and nutraceuticals, while addressing challenges in standardization, safety assessment, and regulatory approval.

Results

Advanced green extraction methods including ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE), microwave-assisted extraction (MAE), supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), and cold plasma-assisted extraction demonstrated superior efficiency and sustainability compared to conventional methods. Multiple fruit and vegetable by-products showed significant antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and prebiotic properties applicable to functional foods and nutraceuticals.

Conclusion

Fruit and vegetable by-products represent valuable renewable sources of bioactive compounds recoverable through green extraction technologies. Future progress requires advancement in scalability of extraction processes, safety and regulatory compliance, and clinical validation through human intervention studies to establish nutraceutical efficacy and enable large-scale sustainable applications.
  • Published in:Foods,
  • Study Type:Review,
  • Source: PMID: 41300042, DOI: 10.3390/foods14223884
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