Effects of Pulsed Electric Fields Processing Strategies on Health-Related Compounds of Plant-Based Foods

Abstract

In the last decades, pulsed electric fields (PEF) have been proposed as alternative or complementary to traditional food processing technologies in order to improve the competitiveness of the food industry. PEF has been suggested as a technology of choice to obtain safe and high-quality plant-based foods with a shelf-life similar to the attained with mild heat pasteurization treatments. On the other hand, the application of PEF as a pretreatment for the permeabilization of vegetable tissues has been demonstrated to enhance the efficiency of mass transfer of water or of valuable compounds from biological matrices in drying, extraction, and diffusion processes. Moreover, PEF treatments are currently under study to prospect their potential to induce stress reactions in plant systems, so that bioproduction of certain compounds can be enhanced or stimulated. However, the impact of different PEF processing strategies on health-related compounds of plan-based foods has not been always considered. These review aims to present recent results regarding the effects of PEF on health-related properties of plant-based foods, including those preserved by PEF and those obtained from PEF-assisted and PEF-stressed processing.