Effects of Thermal and High-pressure Treatments on the Microbiological, Nutritional and Sensory Quality of a Multi-fruit Smoothie

Fruit juices have become an important product for the healthy food world. In the last 5 years, the sales of industrial juices treated by non-thermal preservation technologies such as high-pressure processing (HPP) have strongly increased. In the present study, the effect of the application of two stabilization treatments, mild heating (MH; 80 A degrees C for 7 min) and high-pressure processing (HPP; 350 MPa for 5 min), on multi-fruit smoothies was compared on a wide range of quality parameters immediately after treatment and during a refrigerated storage of 21 days. From the physico-chemical and instrumental colour point of view, immediately after treatment, HPP smoothies were more similar to the fresh product than those treated by MH. During storage, the colour of MH smoothies was more stable although HPP ones showed lower browning index and viscosity more similar to the untreated product. Additionally, HPP provided smoothies with better sensory properties and higher nutritional quality than MH. In general, HPP smoothies were more similar to the untreated product. However, HPP smoothies kept a residual enzyme activity which is likely to limit the shelf life of this multi-fruit smoothie.