Novel ready to serve beverage from green tomato

Abstract

Green tomato is a rich source of α-tomatine, which has anti-carcinogenic, antibiotic and cholesterol reducing effects in the human body. Therefore, present study was aimed to develop healthy ready to serve (RTS) green tomato beverage with α-tomatine content 10 to 11 mg/100 mL. The juice of green tomato was extracted and used at different concentrations (10-14%) with sugar (10-14 °B) and citric acid (0.1-0.3% acidity) to standardize the best consumer acceptable formulation depending on the highest overall acceptability and vitamin C retention. Ginger, lemon juice and black salt each were also added at 1% concentration to increase acceptability of the product. Standardized formulation was further used to optimize the preservation process (thermal treatment with and without addition of preservative). The formulated RTS green tomato beverage processed with thermal treatment at 80°C for 2 min without preservative contained α-tomatine 10.40±0.07 mg/100 mL was judged to be highly acceptable for the overall acceptability and retained significant (p<0.01) amount of vitamin C, antioxidant activity and phenolic compounds with respect to the control. Further, loss of tomatine content was non-significant for 40 days of its refrigerated (7±2°C) storage.