Abstract:
The food industry faces the challenges of sustainable production due to high negative impact
of the food industry on the environment and increasing demand for food products due to rising
World population. To tackle such challenges food industry requires development of innovative
and eco-friendly solutions to exploit agro-food waste and by-products as natural resources
for the next generation of nutraceuticals, functional food products, bioenergy, chemicals,
pharmaceuticals, and other high value-added products. These solutions should also be aligned
with the principles of “green chemistry”1. One of the potential solutions could be the usage
of natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) composed only of edible, recyclable, less or nontoxic
compounds which are predominantly present in nature1/2/3. More precisely, organic
acids, water, sugars, fatty acids, organic salts, amino acids, terpenes, alcohols, and other
compounds which are already utilized by the food industry, can be mixed in the appropriate
ratio to generate solvents with specific features suitable for a wide range of applications in the
food industry3. Since large number of possible NADES combinations can be designed these
solvents could be utilized as a medium for chemical reactions (e.g. hydrolysis), extraction
medium for natural polar or non-polar compounds (e.g. polyphenols, carotenoids), stabilization
medium of extracted compounds etc 1/2/3/4. Due to NADES edible and nontoxic properties
obtained extracts are ready-to-use and in certain cases may be applied in food products without
additional separation technology which reduces cost of food production. One of the examples
is application of NADES to recover polyphenols from food by-products such are raspberry
seeds and wild thyme herbal dust and extracts direct incorporation in functional ice tea like
beverages 1/2/5.
