Avaliação do aspecto físico-químico de polpas de frutas comercializadas no estado do Ceará e sua conformidade com os padrões de identidade e qualidade vigente no Brasil

Abstract

The Brazilian consumer market is increasingly seeking healthy products, aiming at a change in lifestyle. Fruit pulp is a suitable substitute for fresh fruit as it has a short shelf life because at perishability. On the other hand, the market is also very demanding regarding food safety, so it is important to guarantee companies that the product meets the requirements of current legislation. Seeking to analyze this bias, five pulp flavors (acerola, caja, cashew, guava and mango) from six companies located in the state of Ceará, were are submitted to the analysis of identity and quality standards set by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supplies. In addition, the averages obtained from the analyzes underwent statistical treatment. In general, companies had greater difficulty in keeping the cajá pulp within compliance standards, as this flavor was out of compliance for at least one company in each analysis. With the statistical analysis it was observed that the companies did not present significant variance among themselves, in turn, the pulps presented. Possibly, the different characteristics the fruits of origins contributed to this result, while companies may not present discrepancies in technological processing. Given the data obtained it was possible to analyze how the parameters set by legislation can describe the rigidity of the company regarding the manufacturing process, from pre-harvest to the disposal of the product to the consumer.