Thirty years of fresh-cut: Strengths and weaknesses of a successful product

Fresh-cut products (FCP) business has globally grown rapidly in the last decades. The success of FCP is mainly due to their practicality. Being them ready to eat, they perfectly meet the needed of people living in industrialized countries where the frenetic rhythms of life reduce the time devoted to food preparation. FCP also maintain high nutraceutical values, not too far from those of fresh fruits and vegetables. Cutting process negatively influences the shelf life of FCP and the many efforts concentrated to counteract the losses of product. Here, we summarize the strength and weakness of FCP and some new strategies to preserve them. Finally, some achievements of our research team are reported, especially those focused on the strategies to preserve the nutraceutical value of some FCP, and others intended to control the browning phenomenon with particular attention to the role of endogenous ascorbate as browning-preventing compound