Exploring the potential of antioxidants from fruits and vegetables and strategies for their recovery

A balanced and nutritious diet is the cornerstone of good health. The nutritional pyramid advises eating 5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day as a basic principle of a healthy diet, as they provide essential nutrients such as vitamins and minerals, as well as fiber and antioxidants. Consuming them in adequate quantities improves the immune system and helps prevent diseases such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease and even certain types of cancer. Among the most nutrient-dense nutrients in fruit and vegetables are antioxidants. This is the context for this review, in which an exhaustive analysis has been carried out of the bioactive compounds with antioxidant capacity available in the most widely produced fruit and vegetables in Spain, considering not only the studies that identify these types of compounds, but also those that analyze their effects on human health. Furthermore, it is worth highlighting the interest of the extraction of antioxidant compounds in by-product streams from fruit and vegetable processing in the context of the circular economy. Therefore, this review also includes examples of green technologies for the extraction of antioxidants from waste fractions. In this field, microwave and ultrasound-assisted extraction technologies have been found to be the most efficient, both in terms of extraction yields, which are similar to those of conventional technologies, and in terms of the operating conditions required for the process. However, enzyme cocktails or pulsed electric fields also show promising results.