Nutritional and chemical characterization of food products enriched with biological produced fruits of Vaccinum myrtillus L
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resumo
Vaccinum myrtillus L. belongs to Ericaceae family, being commonly known for its sweet small fruits:
the blueberries. Widely consumed in fresh, these fruits are also used in jams and marmalades due
to their digestive and hypoglycemic properties and also due to the presence of several bioactive
compounds [!]. Therefore, it has become a very appealing matrix in the development of functional
products that, beyond their nutritional properties, will add a long-term beneficial
physiological/health effect [2]. In the present work, three novel blueberry based products
developed by RBR Foods Company (Portugal), were characterized in terms of their nutritional
and chemical properties: carbohydrates, ash, proteins, fat and energetic value (following
official methods of food analysis), fatty acids profile (by CG-FID), soluble sugars (by HPLCRI),
organic acids (by HPLC-DAD) and tocopherols (by HPLC-fluorescence). The products
result from a mixture of the fruits with rose petals (PI), marigold petals (P2) and apple and
goji berries (P3). The blueberry fruits were used as control sample. The nutritional profile of
the novel products was very similar to the control sample: the carbohydrates were the most
abundant macronutrient, followed by proteins and total fat. Regarding sugars, fructose,
glucose and sucrose were identified in all the samples. P 1 and P2 didn't show significant
differences in comparison to the control, however, P3 revealed a lower concentration of
sugars. In terms of fatty acids composition, all the studied samples presented higher
contents in polyunsaturated fatty acids, especially due to the contribution of linoleic and alinolenic
acids. The results of tocopherols revealed that the control sample only presented two
isoforrns of tocopherols, a- and y-tocopherol, being the same observed in P3. However, P 1
revealed the presence of all the isoforrns of tocopherols, while P2 was lacking otocopherol;
which is related with the contribution of rose and marigold petals, respectively.
The a-tocopherol isoforrn was the most abundant in all the studied samples. Overall, this work
contributed to the nutritional characterization of novel blueberry based products and is a part
of a wider project that aims the detailed study of these products, namely their potential to be
used as functional foods.
