According to the main principles of the circular economy, recovering bioactive compounds from food waste has significant potential to deliver financial, environmental, and health benefits by incorporating them into food products as additives, emulsifiers, antioxidants, and antimicrobial agents to enhance nutritional and functional value and/or extend product shelf life. This work investigated the potential of a food waste material, such as chickpea aquafaba from industrial processing, as a fermentation substrate using promising lactic acid bacteria, including L. plantarum AME-01, L. paracasei CBA L74, and L. mesenteroides, under non-controlled pH conditions, and evaluated the antioxidant/chelating capacity of the postbiotic obtained from the process. Fermented substrates were thermally inactivated to produce postbiotic preparations, which were characterized in terms of inactivated biomass and lactic acid concentration. Subsequently, liquid postbiotics were spray-dried using a lab-scale spray dryer, and the resulting powders were characterized in terms of antioxidant and chelating properties. While the postbiotic preparations using L. paracasei CBA L74 showed significantly lower activity (23.78 ± 7.25%) compared to non-fermented aquafaba (56.85 ± 2.79%), those using L. plantarum AME-01 (84.60 ± 5.57%) and L. mesenteroides (82.56 ± 1.11%) exhibited increased chelating activity. The antioxidant power of all fermented powders was significantly improved, confirming the potential of postbiotic ingredients as stabilizing additives in food formulations.
Forcina et al. (Wed,) studied this question.