The Effect of Thermal Processing Temperature on the Bioavailability of Micronutrients in Vegetables

Maryna Rubel

Citation: Maryna Rubel, "The Effect of Thermal Processing Temperature on the Bioavailability of Micronutrients in Vegetables", Universal Library of Business and Economics, Volume 03, Issue 02.

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Thermal processing alters the content and accessibility of micronutrients in vegetable matrices in a non-linear and class-dependent manner. The authors systematise data from 35 peer-reviewed publications dated 2002 to 2025, including the two foundational INFOGEST protocols, and map four temperature windows (60 to 80, 80 to 100, 100 to 120 and above 120 °C) onto six classes of micronutrients: vitamin C, B-vitamins together with folate, carotenoids, polyphenols, minerals, and glucosinolates with their isothiocyanate hydrolysis products. The authors operationally distinguish retention, the fraction of a micronutrient remaining in the product after processing, from bioaccessibility, the fraction released into the gastrointestinal lumen under the INFOGEST static in-vitro model, and demonstrate that heating may simultaneously decrease retention and increase bioaccessibility, accounting for the heating paradox observed in tomato. The 80 to 100 °C window maximises bioaccessibility of carotenoids and fat-soluble vitamins through cell-wall disruption; the 60 to 80 °C window lowers phytate to mineral molar ratios without proportional gain in absorption; the 100 to 120 °C window drives lycopene cis to trans isomerisation with a peak in bioaccessibility; above 120 °C thermo-oxidative carotenoid degradation coexists with acrylamide formation in asparagine-rich matrices. No universal temperature optimum simultaneously satisfies all six classes; a working compromise lies within 80 to 100 °C, while for thermolabile vitamin C and folate the optimum shifts to sous-vide at 60 to 80 °C. The contribution is a taxonomy of temperature windows, a cross-class matrix and an operational separation of retention and bioaccessibility within a single quantitative framework.


Keywords: Acrylamide, Bioaccessibility, Carotenoids, Folate, INFOGEST, Lycopene Isomerisation, Micronutrient Bioavailability, Phytate, Retention, Sous-Vide, Temperature Windows, Thermal Processing of Vegetables.

Download doi https://doi.org/10.70315/uloap.ulbec.2026.0302006