Synthetic food preservatives could be used alone or in combination with natural preservatives. Both synthetic and natural antioxidants have been used in food industry; however, application of synthetics preservatives has potential carcinogenic effects but the use of natural preservatives alone has a better advantage for human health with low side effect. As a result, attention has being given to vegetable waste with rich source of synthetic preservatives. Phenolic compound is commonly found in plants and is of noticeable interest due to their antioxidant and antimicrobial.
Food processing industries generate phenolic‐rich vegetable by‐products, and this has been an area of research investigations as sources of antioxidants and antimicrobial for food preservation. The entire tissue of fruits and vegetables is rich in bioactive compounds or phenols but the by‐products have higher contents of antioxidant. Due to the suspected long‐term negative health effect, use of synthetic antioxidants and antibacterial on food has become a common concern of consumer safety. Therefore, the food industry has enforced to seek natural alternatives food preservative. Potato peel is one of the most important waste products with sufficient amount of phenolic compound so this could be used as a replacement for the current synthetic antioxidant and antimicrobial.
Antioxidant
Antioxidants inhibit oxidation of lipids in foods and consumption of high concentration synthetic antioxidant has carcinogenic effect unlike the natural antioxidants. The antioxidant activity of potato peel extracts has strong radical scavenging ability and prevents oxidation reaction in oily foods.
The dominant phenolic compounds of potato peel extracts are chlorogenic and gallic acids. These are potent sources of natural antioxidants that prevent oxidation of vegetable oil, and this could stabilize soybean oil oxidation reaction through minimizing peroxide, totox, and p‐anisidine indices. The ability on minimizing oxidation on vegetable oil, potato peel extracts has equal performance with synthetic antioxidants such as butylhydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylhydroxytoluene (BHT). In comparison with mature potato, young potato peel has excellent source of bioactive phytochemicals nature with antioxidant potential. However, as compared to the application of synthetic antioxidants, potato peel extracts need to apply in higher amount but still looking the advantage of natural antioxidants than the synthetic, it is a promising source of natural antioxidant that could be used as eco‐friendly product on food industries.
Antimicrobial
More than three‐quarter of the world’s population has used medicinal plants for treatment of different disease. Herbal plants are important on prevention against highly pathogenic micro‐organisms, and they are safer means of food preservation. Potato peel extracts have antimicrobial compounds against bacterial and fungal organisms. The antimicrobial nature could be due to the presence of flavonoids and terpenes organic compounds. Potato peel has bacteriostatic nature with nonmutagenic behavior and safe to use in food processing. Therefore, potato peel extract is the future and natural against foodborne pathogenic microbial and the broad spectrum nature of the plant help to discover new chemical classes of antibiotic substances that could serve as food preservative in food processing industries.
SOURCE: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6145310/
