Introduction to Minimally Processed Refrigerated (MPR) Fruits and Vegetables

Abstract

Food processing ranges from unprocessed, raw, whole or minimally processed, freshly prepared foods, up to ultra-processed foods, involving pressing, grinding, refining, extraction, heating, irradiating, ultraheat treating, frying, mixing, pulsed electric field processing, high pressure processing, and many other emerging operations. Today, chronic diseases affect both the very young and the very old people in the whole world. All chronic diseases are caused by deficiency, excess, and toxicity of foods which are closely related to food processing. MPR fruits and vegetables offer relatively new and safe method to solve food-related health problems as well as use all the advances made in science and technology during the last century and minimize food waste. Minimally processed refrigerated (MPR) fruits and vegetables are fresh, raw, whole, or cut, mostly living plant cells, safe, foods which are usually processed and sold to consumers in a ready-to-eat, ready-to-use, ready-to-cook, ready-to-serve forms.