LWT - Food Science and Technology 85 (2017) 470e473

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LWT - Food Science and Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/lwt

Impact of different thermal preservation technologies on the quality of

apple-based smoothies
Jarosław Markowski a, *, Karolina Celejewska a, Agata Rosłonek b, Monika Kosmala c
a
Research Institute of Horticulture, Konstytucji 3 Maja 1/3, 96-100 Skierniewice, Poland
b
Polska Ro
z_ a Ernest Michalski Sp. z o.o. ul. Ro

z_ y 5, Falenty Nowe, 05-090 Raszyn, Poland
c
d
z, Poland
Institute of Food Technology and Analysis, Lodz University of Technology, Stefanowskiego 4/10, 90 -924 Ło

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Increased awareness of the importance of health promoting compounds in processed fruit products has
Received 27 June 2016 led to the creation of novel products, such as smoothies, containing the majority of phenolics and fibre
Received in revised form from fruits. It is important to evaluate the impact of traditional and modern thermal preservation
2 January 2017
methods on the quality of these novel products. Thermal treatment technologies (microwave flow, flow
Accepted 2 January 2017
Available online 3 January 2017
and batch pasteurization) were tested on apple-based smoothies of different composition: apple
smoothies containing rosehip juice or wild blueberry juice. Smoothies with rosehip juice exhibited a
higher total phenolics content than those with the addition of blueberry juice, but the differences were
Keywords:
Pasteurization
insignificant. Anthocyanins content measured in the smoothies with blueberry juice strongly depended
Phenolics on the preservation method used; the highest anthocyanins content was found in microwave preserved
Fibre smoothies. Ascorbic acid content in the juices was the highest in flow-pasteurized juices (29 mg/100 g),
Viscosity while microwave treatment caused a significant decrease (20 mg/100 g). The effect of thermal processing
Vitamins on viscosity was also observed; microwave flow-pasteurized smoothies were characterized by higher
viscosity and total pectins than those preserved by the other methods. This suggests that the preser-
vation process interacts with microstructure and can affect smoothie quality during its shelf-life.
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The process of society aging concerns practically all the coun-
tries in the world, but proceeds at a higher rate in the EU and the
USA than in other countries. The share of elderly population (over
the age of 60) in the world in 1990 was 9.2%, whereas in 2013 it
went up to 11.7%, and is expected to reach 21.1% in 2050 (World
Population Ageing: 1950e2050). Such changes in society were
the driving force of the trend for « healthy aging « and the devel-
opment of functional drinks designed for this specific population
group. Apple is the most cultivated fruit in the EU and should
naturally be considered as the base for healthy drinks, especially as
a number of positive health recommendations for apples and
products made from them can be found in the literature (Boyer &
Liu, 2004). Most fruit and vegetable smoothies can fulfil the re-
quirements set for the category of new functional drinks due to the
high levels of antioxidants, minerals and soluble and insoluble fibre
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jaroslaw.markowski@inhort.pl (J. Markowski).
in them.
The health benefits of dietary fibre include the prevention and
alleviation of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and colon
cancer (Kaczmarczyk, Miller, & Freund, 2012). In smoothies, the
pectins, non-starch polysaccharides (Lattimer & Haub, 2010) are
the main component of soluble fibre. In the production of clear
juices the pectins are completely removed, while in cloudy juices
the levels of 0.2e1.3 g/l can be found (Markowski, Baron,
Mieszczakowska, & Płocharski, 2009). The effect of intake of pro-
cessed apple products on the cholesterol profile is in general pos-
itive, except for clear apple juice (Ravn-Haren et al., 2013). Taking
the above into account, the technologies favouring the retention of
pectins are strongly recommended for the processed products.
Smoothies can be enriched with less known fruits which could
push up the health value of these products; however, all these
products have to be preserved by physical methods to ensure safety
and a long shelf-life during marketing. Fruit juices, and in particular
smoothies (these retain naturally occurring components, such as
dietary fibre), are nutrient dense food, according to USDA (2016),
and are offered in child nutrition programs (USDA, 2015), as part of
the overall diet which, of course includes whole bread.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lwt.2017.01.004
0023-6438/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 J. Markowski et al. / LWT - Food Science and Technology 85 (2017) 470e473
Typical preservation of viscous products involves batch
pasteurization, which, due to the thermal resistance of liquids and
packaging, takes a long time. In contrast, flow pasteurization needs
only a few seconds to raise the temperature to inactivate enzymes
and kill microorganisms, which should improve the retention of
heat-sensitive compounds. Considering the above, comparison was
made of the standard batch pasteurization with two flow
pasteurization methods: high temperature short time (HTST)
pasteurization and innovative microwave flow pasteurization.
2. Experimental
2.1. Production
For the experiment, the ‘Golden Delicious’ apple cultivar was
selected due to the fact that it is characterized by a good balance
between the sugar content and acidity, and is available across
Europe for fresh consumption and processing. The average soluble
solids content of apples processed was 13.8 g/100 g, and acidity
0.51 g/100 g, resulting in the soluble solids:acidity ratio of 27. To
investigate the degradation of heat-sensitive compounds such as
ascorbic acid and anthocyanins, apple smoothies were suitably
enriched with rosehip juice and blueberry juice.
In the production of cloudy juice, apples were ground with a
Fryma perforated disc mill with a sieve having 6 mm diameter
openings (BASIS 91/55, Fryma-Maschinen AG, Rheinfelden,
Switzerland), with the addition of ascorbic acid (200 mg/kg),
pressed using a rack and cloth press (Bucher, Niederweningen,
Switzerland), and pasteurized with a plate heat exchanger (P20-VB,
Alfa-Laval Food Engineering, Lund, Sweden) at 94
C for 30 s. Apple
pure
e was obtained by sieving fruit quarters blanched at 90
C for
3 min through a pulper machine with 1 mm stainless steel sieve
(Spomasz, Torun
, Poland). The hot pure
e was deaerated under
vacuum. Both the cloudy juice and pure
e were kept frozen until
processing. Smoothies were produced by mixing the apple pure
e
(500 g/kg) with the cloudy apple juice and rosehip juice (400 and
100 g/kg, respectively) or wild blueberry juice (300 and 200 g/kg).
The rosehip and wild blueberry juices were produced and supplied
by Polska Ro
za
_ processing company. The mixtures were dis-
integrated using a Fryma colloid mill (Fryma Rheinfelden, Type
20e80, Switzerland) and heat processed. Glass bottles (0.25 L) were
used for filling each batch of the products. The control samples
were batch-pasteurized by immersing bottles in cold water, hold-
ing them for 20 min after reaching 90
C, followed by cooling down
in tap water. The second batch was flow-pasteurized with a tubular
heat exchanger (P90, Voran Maschinen GmbH, Pichl bei Wels,
Austria) at a temperature of 94e96
C for 40 s, hot-filled into bottles
and immediately cooled in tap water. The conditions of the heat
treatments assured microbial stability (The Food Processors
Institute, 1988). The third batch was microwave flow-pasteurized
using Enbio Jet equipment (Enbio Technology, Suchy Dwo
r,
Poland) at parameters set up by the staff of the Enbio company, and
cooled immediately after filling the bottles. The experiments were
conducted in two technological replications for each treatment.
2.2. Analyses
Anthocyanins (ANT) were determined by the pH differential
method (Giusti & Wrolstad, 2001). The ANT content was calculated
using cyaninin-3-glucoside with molar absorptivity of 29,600 at
541 nm and molecular weight of 442.2.
Ascorbic acid (ASC) was determined after homogenizing sam-
ples with an Ultra Turrax T 25 homogenizer (Ika-Werke, Staufen,
Germany) in 60 g/L meta-phosphoric acid water solution, using
HPLC HP 1200 (Hewlett-Packard, Waldbronn, Germany) with a
471
DAD detector and two LC-18 columns (25 cm  4.6 mm) connected
in series, particle size 5 mm (Supelco, Bellefonte, PA, USA). 10 g/L
KH2PO4 buffer at pH 2.5 was used as the mobile phase at 30
C, with
a flow rate of 0.8 ml/min. Detection of ASC was at 254 nm, and a
bandwidth of 6 nm. Before injection, the samples were filtered
through 0.45 mm nylon filters.
b-carotene was determined by the HPLC method described by
Bohoyo-Gil, Dominques-Valmondo, Garcja Parra, and Gonzalez-
Gomez (2012), using an HP 1200 (Hewlett-Packard, Waldbronn,
Germany) and a Kinetex C18 100A (250 mm  4.6 mm) column
(Phenomenex, Torrence, USA). Detection of carotenoids was at
450 nm, and a bandwidth of 6 nm. The LOD of carotene was 0.12 mg/
100 g.
Total phenolics content (TPC) was determined by the Folin-
Ciocalteu colorimetric method (Tsao & Yang, 2003). The absor-
bance was read at 765 nm. TPC was calculated against gallic acid.
Total pectins (TP) and water-soluble pectins (WSP) were
determined with an IFU 26 (Anonymous, 2008) by ethanol pre-
cipitation and reaction with carbazole in sulphuric acid.
Insoluble fibre (IDF) & soluble fibre (SDF) were determined
according to AOAC 991.42, using a Megazyme K-TDFR test kit and
Foss Fibertec (Fibertec™ 1023, Ho € gan€
as, Sweden). Total dietary
fibre (TDF) was the sum of the two forms of fibre.
Viscosity was determined with a Brookfield LV-
DVII þ viscometer (Brookfield Eng., Middleboro, USA) with no. 3
spindle at 60 rpm; the procedure of sample stabilization and
preparation was according to ASTM D 2196-86.
2.3. Statistics
A two-way ANOVA and Duncan's multiple range test at P ¼ 0.05
were used to compare the mean values of the data. The statistical
analyses were conducted with Statistica 8.0 (StatSoft, Tulsa, USA).
The mean values represent two independent technological repli-
cations of juice production methods.
3. Results and discussion
The data concerning the basic qualities of the juices are pre-
sented in Tables 1 and 2.
Smoothies with added wild blueberry juice contained 13e18
mg/100 g anthocyanins. For this unstable group of phenolics, mi-
crowave flow pasteurization was the best thermal treatment
technology. The highest anthocyanins content of 17.7 mg/100 g was
found in microwave-preserved blueberry smoothies, while in the
batch-pasteurized control samples there was only 12.8 mg/100 g
(Table 1). By contrast, the other unstable compound, ascorbic acid,
was the highest in flow-pasteurized juices (29 mg/100 g), while the
microwave treatment surprisingly resulted in a post-process value
of 20 mg/100 g. This is at variance with literature data (Igual,
Garcia-Martinez, Camacho, & Martinez Navarette, 2010) and sug-
gests that for a better comparison of these technologies more
investigation concerning the measurement of microwave heat load
and the time-temperature profile should be performed.
Literature data indicate that b-carotene and its isomers are
stable during heat treatment (Provesi, Dias, & Amante, 2011), and
this was the case with the carotenoids originating from the wild
rose hip juice (Table 1); irrespective of the treatment, the average
value was 0.35 mg/100 g of the product.
The total phenolics content was in general not influenced by the
thermal treatment method used (Table 1), and the average amount
of phenolic compounds in the smoothies was 150 mg/100 g; this is
in agreement with the average value for 48 smoothies available on
the German market (Reißaus et al., 2011).
The characteristics of the different forms of dietary fibre are
472 J. Markowski et al. / LWT - Food Science and Technology 85 (2017) 470e473

Table 1
Qualitative composition of apple-based smoothies.

Smoothie type Thermal treatment Anthocyanins b-carotene Ascorbic acid Total phenolics

mg/100 g mg/100 g mg/100 g mg/100 g

a b a
Apple - rosehip Control e batch pasteurization not determined 0.35 ± 0.02 26.2 ± 0.7 160 ± 30
a c a
Flow pasteurization not determined 0.33 ± 0.03 28.8 ± 2.3 162 ± 31
a a a
Microwave flow pasteurization not determined 0.36 ± 0.01 20.4 ± 0.3 152 ± 22
Apple - blueberry Control e batch pasteurization 12.8 ± 0.9 a <0.12 <0.1 143 ± 16 a

Flow pasteurization 15.7 ± 0.7 b <0.12 <0.1 143 ± 13 a

Microwave flow pasteurization 17.7 ± 0.9 c <0.12 <0.1 147 ± 15 a

Note: Averages marked with the same letter within the same column do not differ significantly according to Duncan's multiple range test at p < 0.05.

Table 2
Fibre and viscosity parameters of apple-based smoothies.

Smoothie type Thermal treatment TP WSP SDF IDF Viscosity

mg/100 g Pa*s
a c bc a c
Apple - rosehip Batch pasteurization 341 ± 31 298 ± 43 565 ± 112 638 ± 33 0.266 ± 0.008
Flow pasteurization 374 ± 25 b 271 ± 25 bc 488 ± 92 abc 690 ± 105 a 0.185 ± 0.029 a

Microwave flow pasteurization 401 ± 31 b 261 ± 30 bc 625 ± 62 c 675 ± 69 a 0.278 ± 0.006 c

Apple - blueberry Batch pasteurization 314 ± 1a 249 ± 3 ab 353 ± 83 a 645 ± 71 a 0.232 ± 0.021 b

Flow pasteurization 327 ± 7a 222 ± 9a 428 ± 109 ab 640 ± 93 a 0.179 ± 0.029 a

Microwave flow pasteurization 333 ± 18 a 215 ± 15 a 458 ± 73 ab 715 ± 75 a 0.315 ± 0.021 d

Note: Averages marked with the same letter within the same column do not differ significantly according to Duncan’s multiple range test at p < 0.05.

given in Table 2. The total dietary fibre content was 1.24 g/100 g for
microwave-treated smoothies, and was much higher than in cloudy
apple juices, in which it is 0.08e0.10 g/100 ml (Barth et al., 2005),
and even more than in pulp-enriched cloudy apple juices (Will,
Roth, Olk, Ludwig, & Dietrich, 2008).
The average total amount of pectins in the smoothies (348 mg/
100 g) was about 50% of the amounts reported in the literature for
raw apples (Baker, 1997); the majority of pectins were water soluble
e 73%, on average. The soluble dietary fibre content was higher
than the level of water soluble pectins, and this, together with the
high level of insoluble dietary fibre (an average of 667 mg/100 g)
indicates the abundance of different dietary fibre fractions in apple-
based smoothies.
The effect of thermal processing on the viscosity of smoothies
was also observed; the microwave-pasteurized smoothies were
characterized by significantly higher viscosity than those processed
by the other methods (Table 2). This may be an indicator of a severe
thermal treatment during the application of microwaves (Osorio,
Martinez-Navarette, Moraga, & Carbonell, 2008), which may be
confirmed by the highest degradation of ascorbic acid. The results
obtained are in agreement with the results for total pectins, whose
amount was the lowest for batch pasteurization and the highest in
the microwaved smoothies. This may suggest that the heat treat-
ment process can interact with the microstructure of smoothies
and can affect their quality during shelf-life. However, a sensory
evaluation (data not shown) conducted after processing did not
reveal any significant effects of the preservation method on the
quality of the products.
4. Conclusions
1. Apple-based smoothies contain about 1.3 g/100 g fibre, which is
about 50% of the amount in fresh fruits.
2. Addition of juices high in ascorbic acid or anthocyanins can
enhance the nutritional value of smoothies without affecting
their fibre content.
3. The composition of the smoothies post-processing suggests that
the different thermal treatments gave products of acceptable
quality, however, flow pasteurization seems superior in respect
to preservation of heat sensitive compounds.
Acknowledgements
This project has received funding from The European Union's
Seventh Framework Programmegrant agreement FP7-311754-
OPTIFEL
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