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Sustainable Functional Food Processing

Functional nutrition has become one of the main directions for a healthy lifestyle and sustainable food production due to its promising positive influence on health and its association with the use of raw materials of natural origins. Hence, it has attracted great interest from both consumers and manufacturers concerned with human wellbeing and sustainable economic growth. Not surprisingly, the functional sector has become an increasingly lucrative segment of the food industry with a fast-growing market due to the new sociodemographic trends (e.g., longer life expectancy, promotion of healthy lifestyles, better health care, etc.). For instance, functional juices that are made from indigenous fruits (which, economically, are insufficiently explored) represent an interesting niche, providing all the above-mentioned characteristics to satisfy the interests of various food markets. Here, the focus is placed on biologically active compounds (BACs) and probiotics that are responsible for numerous positive effects of functional foods on health. Unfortunately, the majority of BACs are thermolabile, which is especially important for food production that still employs classical heat treatments (e.g., pasteurization). As previously documented, this will lead to food degradation and negatively affect the quality of the final product. To prevent such negative effects of the production process, scientist and engineers have concentrated their efforts on designing economical and environmentally acceptable technologies that are able to preserve food nutritional and sensory quality and microbiological stability during functional food processing. Such approaches are based on low energy consumption and on the use of low- impact processing and “hurdle technology” that combines advanced and conventional food technologies (e.g., high-power ultrasound (HPU), pulse electric field (PEF), etc.). Food design is important for consumer sensory appeal and economic success ; hence, technologies such as 3D food printing can be particularly useful in food production. This Special Issue of Foods will address the topics relevant to sustainable functional food production, functional fruit juices, biologically active compounds (BACs), hurdle technology, advanced food processing, 3D food printing, and authentic fruits.

sustainable functional food production ; functional fruit juices ; biologically active compounds (BACs) ; hurdle technology ; advanced food processing ; 3D food printing ; authentic fruits

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