Whole vegetables and fruits are generally not used in beverages as they contain ingredients such as skins, seeds, stems, roots, and the like which may affect the taste and mouthfeel of the beverage. Instead, juices and/or pulp are obtained from the vegetables and fruits and the skins, seeds, stems, roots, and the like are discarded. These discarded ingredients are often in the form of pomace.
Pomace is the pulpy edible by-product remaining after fruit or vegetable juice pressing processes, wine crush operations, puree and concentrate operations, canning processes, and other food manufacturing processes. Pomace may include, for example, skins, pulp, seeds, and edible part of stems of the fruit and vegetable such as apples or carrots. In some cases the pomace can derive or contain other parts of the fruit and vegetable such as pod, stalk, flower, root, leaves and tuber. In a juice extraction process, the pomace is typically in the form of a part of press cake. By-products from paste and puree processes such as tomato skins and seeds from tomato ketchup and paste processing are also included in the pomace even they are not the by-products from juice extracts. Fruit skins from cannery are also edible by-products. Hereafter, pomace includes all edible by-products from fruit and vegetable juice, paste, puree and canning processes.
Pomace has been used for fertilizer and substrates for microorganism growth, for example, and dried pomace has had limited use in food products such as soups and snacks, and also has been used in the dietary supplement industry. However, pomace is generally not used in food products due to its gritty texture, sedimentation, fibrous nature, high insoluble fiber content, intense flavor and lack of starch and protein. Thus pomace is generally considered a waste by-product in the fruit and vegetable industry.
For example, cranberry pomace remains after the squeezing of juice for cranberry type cocktails and juices and concentrates. These cranberry pomace materials have been found to contain 70% to 75% fiber with in insoluble to soluble fiber ratio of 9 or 10 to 1 (wet basis) less than 5%-10% protein, and less that 5% sugars and starches. Thus, by-products are typically removed from the juicing process due to challenges with texture and flavor when creating a juice beverage.
It would be beneficial to process pomace as well as whole fruits and vegetables to arrive at a useful food ingredient in order to avoid such waste.