Plant-based foods gain more importance since they play a key role in sustainable, low-meat and healthy diets. In developing countries, these food products, especially legumes and cereals, are important staple foods. Nevertheless, the question arises on how efficient they are to deliver minerals and if it is useful to encourage their consumption to reduce the prevalence of mineral deficiencies? This review paper focuses on the discrepancy between the mineral content and the amount of minerals that can be released and absorbed from plant-based foods during human digestion which can be attributed to several inherent factors such as the presence of mineral antinutrients (phytic acid, polyphenols and dietary fiber) and physical barriers (surrounding macronutrients and cell wall). Further, this review paper summarizes the effects of different processing techniques (milling, soaking, dehulling, fermentation, germination and thermal processing) on mineral bioaccessibility and bioavailability of plant-based foods. The positive impact of these techniques mostly relies on the fact that antinutrients levels are reduced due to removal of fractions rich in antinutrients and/or due to their leaching into the processing liquid.Although processing can have a positive effect, it also can induce leaching out of minerals and a reduced mineral bioaccessibility and bioavailability.

Postharvest storage and subsequent processing influences mineral concentrations and bioaccessibility.

Mineral (Mg, Ca, Fe and Zn) bioaccessibility in common beans was evaluated taking into consideration the common bean food chain from postharvest storage over processing (soaking and cooking) until consumption....

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Minerals are required by the human body to perform physiological functions. Mineral deficiencies, often caused by low mineral bioaccessibility in plant-based foods, are a matter of great concern all over the world. Several antinutrients (e.g. pectin) may contribute to this reduced mineral bioaccessibility by formation of indigestible complexes due to mineral binding. Structural characteristics of the antinutrients, as for instance the degree of methylesterification (DM) in the case of pectin, may play a role in this mineral binding phenomenon and has been evaluated before, however, only in single mineral model systems. In natural food systems, several mineral types are present together which may affect each other's bioaccessibility. Therefore, this study investigated the influence of the presence of Ca 2+ on Zn 2+ binding capacity and bioaccessibility in mineral-pectin model systems with different DM. The results showed that increasing Ca 2+ concentration and pectin DM reduces the Zn 2+ binding capacity of pectin and consequently increases Zn 2+ bioaccessibility in the in vitro small intestine. Moreover, the in vitro digestion procedure with adjustment of pH only, no addition of enzymes, bile salts nor digestive fluids during simulation of gastric and small intestinal phases, was found to be most appropriate to fundamentally study the influence of pectin DM and presence of Ca 2+ on Zn 2+ bioaccessibility in mineral-pectin model systems. Keywords Citrus pectin, degree of methylesterification, mineral (Ca 2+ and Zn 2+) competition, Zn 2+ binding capacity, Zn 2+ bioaccessibility. number of macromolecules and for more than 300 enzymatic reactions (Gharibzahedi & Jafari, 2017; Jackson & Lowe, 1992). Low zinc blood levels may lead to numerous clinical symptoms, such as growth retardation, impaired brain development and cognitive performance, poor wound healing, diarrhoea, infertility or increased risk of infections (Wapnir, 2000). One of the major contributing factors towards mineral deficiencies is inadequate intake, as minerals cannot be synthesized by the human body and therefore must be obtained from the diet. Inadequate mineral intake can be attributed to low amounts in the ingested food or low mineral bioaccessibility (BAC) from the consumed food products (Platel & Srinivasan, 2015). The term bioaccessibility is defined as the fraction of a nutrient which is released from the food matrix into the gastrointestinal tract through the digestion process and that becomes available for intestinal absorption (Carbonell-Capella, Buniowska, Barba, Esteve, & Frígola, 2014). In plant-based foods, mineral BAC can be reduced due to the presence of several mineral antinutrients (Platel & Srinivasan, 2015), including dietary fibers, phytic acid or polyphenols. These mineral antinutrients can bind in situ minerals, minerals which are added to the food or minerals originating from other simultaneously ingested food ingredients, thereby potentially reducing the mineral release for intestinal absorption (Kumar, Sinha, Makkar, & Beck...

The optimum operating temperatures for the maximum production of ethanol and the maximum utilization of substrate in batch fermentations of a waste sulphite liquor (WSL) as well as a synthetic medium using Saccharomyces cerevisiae were determined. The fastest consumption of substrate resulting in the shortest fermentation times of 13 h and 45 h was achieved at 35°C and 30°C for the synthetic medium and the WSL, respectively. The concentrations of ethanol in the two media were also maximum under these conditions: 11.6g dm−3 and 9.4 g dm−3 for the synthetic medium and the WSL, respectively. The productivities of biomass and ethanol increased with the increase of temperature and reached maximum values of 0.89 g dm−3 h−1 and 0.21 g dm−3 h−1 in the synthetic medium and the WSL, respectively. The inhibiting agents in the waste sulphite liquor affected the metabolic rates of microbial activities and prolonged the overall fermentation time while decreasing the productivities of biomass and ethanol. From analysis of the fermentation kinetics a mathematical model based on the Monod model was developed to describe the cellular growth and ethanol production. The model included inhibition terms for ethanol and the inhibiting agents in the waste liquor. The temperature dependence of the model parameters followed the Arrhenius law for temperatures between 15°C and 35°C. The activation energies (E) and the frequency constants (A) of these parameters were also determined.