Grown to be Blue—Antioxidant Properties and Health Effects of Colored Vegetables. Part I: Root Vegetables

Petropoulos, Spyridon A.; Sampaio, Shirley L.; Di Gioia, Francesco; Tzortzakis, Nikos; Rouphael, Youssef; Kyriacou, Marios C.; Ferreira, Isabel

doi:10.3390/antiox8120617

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Grown to be Blue—Antioxidant Properties and Health Effects of Colored Vegetables. Part I: Root Vegetables

Spyridon A. Petropoulos

^1,*

⁴

⁵

⁶

and

Isabel Ferreira

^2,*

Crop Production and Rural Environment, Department of Agriculture, University of Thessaly, 38446 Nea Ionia, Greece

Centro de Investigação de Montanha (CIMO), Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Campus de Santa Apolónia, 5300-253 Bragança, Portugal

Department of Plant Science, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA

⁴

Department of Agricultural Sciences, Biotechnology and Food Science, Cyprus University of Technology, 3603 Limassol, Cyprus

⁵

Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, 80055 Portici, Italy

⁶

Department of Vegetable Crops, Agricultural Research Institute, 1516 Nicosia, Cyprus

Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Antioxidants 2019, 8(12), 617; https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox8120617

Received: 16 November 2019 / Revised: 30 November 2019 / Accepted: 3 December 2019 / Published: 4 December 2019

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Antioxidant Properties of Natural Products: A Themed Issue in Honor of Professor Isabel C.F.R. Ferreira)

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Abstract

During the last few decades, the food and beverage industry faced increasing demand for the design of new functional food products free of synthetic compounds and artificial additives. Anthocyanins are widely used as natural colorants in various food products to replenish blue color losses during processing and to add blue color to colorless products, while other compounds such as carotenoids and betalains are considered as good sources of other shades. Root vegetables are well known for their broad palette of colors, and some species, such as black carrot and beet root, are already widely used as sources of natural colorants in the food and drug industry. Ongoing research aims at identifying alternative vegetable sources with diverse functional and structural features imparting beneficial effects onto human health. The current review provides a systematic description of colored root vegetables based on their belowground edible parts, and it highlights species and/or cultivars that present atypical colors, especially those containing pigment compounds responsible for hues of blue color. Finally, the main health effects and antioxidant properties associated with the presence of coloring compounds are presented, as well as the effects that processing treatments may have on chemical composition and coloring compounds in particular. View Full-Text

Keywords: anthocyanins; antioxidant activity; beet root; betacyanins; cyanidin; blue potatoes; carotenoids; flavonoids; natural colorants; sweet potato

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Petropoulos, S.A.; Sampaio, S.L.; Di Gioia, F.; Tzortzakis, N.; Rouphael, Y.; Kyriacou, M.C.; Ferreira, I. Grown to be Blue—Antioxidant Properties and Health Effects of Colored Vegetables. Part I: Root Vegetables. Antioxidants 2019, 8, 617. https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox8120617

AMA Style

Petropoulos SA, Sampaio SL, Di Gioia F, Tzortzakis N, Rouphael Y, Kyriacou MC, Ferreira I. Grown to be Blue—Antioxidant Properties and Health Effects of Colored Vegetables. Part I: Root Vegetables. Antioxidants. 2019; 8(12):617. https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox8120617

Chicago/Turabian Style

Petropoulos, Spyridon A., Shirley L. Sampaio, Francesco Di Gioia, Nikos Tzortzakis, Youssef Rouphael, Marios C. Kyriacou, and Isabel Ferreira. 2019. "Grown to be Blue—Antioxidant Properties and Health Effects of Colored Vegetables. Part I: Root Vegetables" Antioxidants 8, no. 12: 617. https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox8120617

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Grown to be Blue—Antioxidant Properties and Health Effects of Colored Vegetables. Part I: Root Vegetables

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