The nutritional and functional potential of tomato by-products

The tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) is one of the most widely cultivated vegetable crops in Mediterranean countries. Important amounts of tomato are consumed in the form of processed products such as tomato juice, paste, puree, ketchup, and salsa. Tomato processing by-product is constituted by peel and seeds, and represent around the 4% of fruit weight. If the waste remaining is not used, it will increase the disposal problem and also aggravate environmental pollution. Besides the disposal on the field, at this moment, tomato by-product is mainly used for animal feeding, with no economical benefits for the industry. Tomato by-products have an excellent chemical composition. According to the authors, fiber is the major compound of tomato by-product 59.03%, other values are 25.73% total sugars, 19.27% protein, 7.55% pectin, 5.85% total fat and 3.92% mineral content. Moreover, tomato by-products obtained as a residue of tomato processing plants can be used to extract different compounds of high nutritional and economical values as fiber, antioxidants, or oil that can be used in food industry. Based on the interesting chemical composition of tomato by-products and fractions, the actual trends of recovery by-products propose their use in human nutrition as functional food. However, in order to use tomato by-product or some fractions (seeds and peels), first of all it is necessary to find and set an easy and economic method to separate and preserve these fractions obtained.