Evolution of antioxidants in dietary fiber powder produced from white cabbage outer leaves: effects of blanching and drying methods.

White cabbage outer leaves, which are usually discarded both during industrial processing and selling in a consumer market, have proven to be a good source of dietary fiber (DF) as well as antioxidants and can be effectively transformed into functional DF powder. In the past, however, only hot air drying was used to prepare DF powder from cabbage outer leaves although it is well recognized that this drying technique could lead to much quality degradation of a dried product. This work was therefore aimed at studying the evolution of selected important antioxidants, e.g., phenolic compounds and vitamin C, in white cabbage outer leaves during vacuum drying at 60, 70 and 80 °C. The effect of pretreatment viz. steam blanching was also evaluated. The results showed that there were losses of antioxidants during steam blanching; vacuum dried blanched leaves nevertheless contained higher antioxidant contents and activity than dried unblanched leaves. Losses of antioxidants during vacuum drying were also noted to be less than those during hot air drying. Overall, the results showed that there were no differences in the antioxidants retention among all the tested conditions performed in this study. Therefore, the most suitable condition for the production of antioxidant DF powder from cabbage outer leaves is vacuum drying at 80 °C as this condition requires the minimum specific energy consumption.