State Key Laboratory of Food Science and Technology, Jiangnan University, 214122 Wuxi, Jiangsu, China.
State Key Laboratory of Food Science and Technology, Jiangnan University, 214122 Wuxi, Jiangsu, China; Jiangsu Province Key Laboratory of Advanced Food Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Jiangnan University, China.
Food Res Int. 2019 Dec;126:108660. doi: 10.1016/j.foodres.2019.108660. Epub 2019 Sep 10.
Edible flowers have a long history of consumption in the form of vegetable flowers, fruit flowers or aromatic flowers. Because of their colorful and flavorful nature, edible flowers are believed to contain various nutritional and bioactive components. Today, people are advocating to eat nutritious food and paying attention to healthy foods, flower foods have become a new fashion diet trend. Although edible flowers have great sensory attraction, they have not used in food yet as widely as fresh vegetables and fruits have. The extremely short shelf-life limits the commercial use of edible flowers. In order to find some novel processing technologies which can extend the shelf-life and ensure the commercial use of flowers, we summarized the data of more than 100 studies performed until now on edible flowers. This review concludes emerging technologies including modified atmosphere packaging, high hydrostatic pressure, irradiation and edible coating to keep flower fresh, drying technologies including microwave drying, freeze drying and hybrid drying to maintain the optimal state of flower materials, as well as different extraction methods to extract the bioactive compounds and the microencapsulation of these compounds.
可食用花卉以蔬菜花卉、花果或芳香花卉的形式被食用已有很长的历史。由于其色彩斑斓、风味独特，人们认为可食用花卉含有各种营养成分和生物活性成分。如今，人们提倡食用营养丰富的食物和关注健康食品，花卉食品已成为一种新的时尚饮食潮流。尽管可食用花卉具有很强的感官吸引力，但它们在食品中的应用还没有像新鲜蔬菜和水果那样广泛。极短的保质期限制了可食用花卉的商业用途。为了寻找一些新颖的加工技术来延长保质期并确保花卉的商业用途，我们总结了截至目前已进行的 100 多项关于可食用花卉的研究数据。本综述总结了一些新兴技术，包括气调包装、高静压、辐照和可食用涂层来保持花卉的新鲜度，干燥技术包括微波干燥、冷冻干燥和混合干燥来保持花卉材料的最佳状态，以及不同的提取方法来提取生物活性化合物和这些化合物的微胶囊化。
