Fruit and vegetable by-products as functional ingredients: what are the limitations for large-scale industrial processing as powder?

Resumen

Fruit and vegetable by-products have been studied worldwide and have shown to be an important source of functional components such as bioactive compounds and fibers, among others. However, the industrial processing of such by-products has not been observed as occurring in a large scale for human consumption. Therefore, the aim of this work was to analyze and evaluate a hypothesis for the main barriers to the industrial processing of edible parts of food by-products turned into powder. Data from the literature suggest that culture, force of habit, and food neophobia are key issues to a positive attitude in the consumers’ buying decisions. Also, characteristics of food by-products such as moisture, temperature, low volumetric density, susceptibility to spoil, costs, and the lack of tested and proved protocols, for the industrial processing of this kind of material, seem to be barriers for the food industries financial support to this part of food processing chain. The lack of information on the markets in the scientific and technical literature, additionally to the industrial technological difficulties, may play an important role in the decision-making of industries for the wide processing and sale of by-products. Therefore, applied studies with a holistic view on the utilization of food by-products, together with a high follow-up communication, can result in better knowledge and, consequently, in the reaching out to consumers and market for these food by-products.