Nutraceuticals Recovery from Tomato Processing Waste and By-Products: Lycopene

Nutraceuticals are food or food products that can have health and medical benefits, e.g. the prevention and treatment of diseases. Among these, carotenoids, have a special interest for their high activity as natural antioxidants compounds. These molecules can play a relevant physiological role, and are contained in many fruits and vegetables like tomatoes. There is a growing interest worldwide by many companies in performing the extraction of carotenoids (lycopene, beta-carotene, etc) from tomato wastes (peels and seeds) in order to meet the requirements and need of the international nutraceuticals, food additives, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic markets. The health benefits of these dietary antioxidants and their use in nutrition to supplement and correct dietary needs, has increased the demand for fruit and vegetable products with recognized and improved antioxidant quality. Tomato (Solanum Lycopersicon) is particularly rich in these molecules that are only partially recovered and available after the industrial processing. Lycopene can be an example of the versatility of the carotenoids. It is often included among the major components of pharmaceuticals for the treatment of many pathologies, and it is widely used in cosmetics formulations for its high solubility in fats and oils. It is worth to note that carotenoids like lycopene are still among the major components of waste originating from tomato processing plants, and are dumped with the waste, considered as low value by-product and useless material to discard. The amount of tomato by-products deriving from industrial processes is growing annually. In Europe it is estimated that about ten million tons of tomatoes are processed by the food industry, and the deriving wastes can be quantified in about 0.1 million tons. These residues can be used as a source of carotenoids and mainly of Lycopene, reincorporated in low-quality tomato products, and also used as an ingredient addressed to animal foodstuff. Countries insisting on the Mediterranean sea, e.g. Italy, are the main producers of tomatoes in Europe, and the waste and residues of the industrial processing of tomatoes represent a low cost and relatively cheap source of molecules with nutraceutical potential use.