Fresh-cut aromatic herbs: Nutritional quality stability during shelf-life

Fresh-cut vegetables are a successful convenient healthy food. Nowadays, the presence of new varieties of minimally processed vegetables in the market is common in response to the consumers demand for new flavours and high quality products. Within the most recent fresh-cut products are the aromatic herbs. In this work, the objective was to evaluate the nutritional quality and stability of four fresh-cut aromatic herbs. Several physicochemical quality characteristics (colour, pH, total soluble solids, and total titratable acidity) were monitored in fresh-cut chives, coriander, spearmint and parsley leaves, stored under refrigeration (3±1°C) during 10 days. Their nutritional composition was determined, including mineral composition (phosphorous, potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, manganese and copper) and fat- and water-soluble vitamin contents. Total soluble phenolics, flavonoids and the antioxidant capacity were determined by spectrophotometric methods. The aromatic herbs kept their fresh appearance during the storage, maintaining their colour throughout shelf-life. Their macronutrient composition and mineral content were stable during storage. Coriander had the highest mineral and fat-soluble vitamin content, while spearmint showed the best scores in the phenolic, flavonoid and antioxidant capacity assays. Vitamins and antioxidant capacity showed some variation during storage, with a differential behaviour of each compound according to the sample. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.
Joana Santos is thankful to FCT for the PhD grant SFRH/BD/66476/2009 financed by POPH-QREN and subsidized by ESF and MCTES. M.H. would like to thank MICINN for a “Ramón y Cajal” research contract. This work had been supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia through project no. PEst-C/EQB/LA0006/2013 and NORTE-07-0124-FEDER-000069- Food Science.