Improve the shelf life of perishable goods through stabilization of vitamins

Food processing industries face great pressure to increase the shelf life of goods decreasing the tons of waste generated every year.

At the same time consumers are becoming more conscious about their choices and more critical about the use of synthetic preservatives.

The most common group of chemical compounds used to preserve the freshness of food are vitamins, also known as antioxidants.

Antioxidants are compounds capable to inhibit oxidation which is a chemical reaction that leads to the production of free radicals, involving the possible damage the cells. Antioxidants, such as vitamins (vitamin C - ascorbic acid or vitamin E - tocopherol) end these chain reactions. For that reason, many food supplements and cosmetics are constituted by these vitamins.

To prevent their early degradation is of maximum interest and it is the objective of this project to disclose the use of deep eutectic systems (DES) to increase the shelf-time of these compounds. DES are mixtures of two solid species that at particular molar ratio form a new compound with different properties.

The team has demonstrated already that the use of this technology enhances the antioxidant activity up to 5 days, and prevents fruit oxidation up to 48 hours, contrarily to what happens with conventional methods which only prevent food oxidation up a couple of hours.

Within this proof of concept, the team intends to validate the product in terms of its technical features but also validate the market and evaluate the commercial potential of our solution.