Transformation of carrots into novel food ingredients and innovative healthy foods

Carrot is one of the most consumed root vegetables worldwide. Moreover, carrot is a functional food because it provides significant amounts of various nutraceuticals, including carotenoids, dietary fiber, and phenolics. Due to its pleasant flavor, carrot has been transformed into a functional food ingredient. Herein, postharvest treatments (i.e., wounding stress, high hydrostatic pressure, and extrusion) are presented as practical technologies to increase the content and extractability of bioactive compounds in carrots and to modify the functional properties of the tissue (i.e., water solubility and oil absorption index), before its transformation to novel nutraceutical foods (i.e., juices and purees) or before its incorporation as an ingredient to food formulations (i.e., tortillas and sausages). The information presented demonstrates that carrot is a versatile crop that the food industry should further exploit due to its functional and nutraceutical properties that allow the generation of novel food ingredients and the formulation of innovative healthy foods. Further research should be focused on validating the pharmacological properties of foods incorporating carrots as a functional food ingredient.