The leaves were cut into quarters and then sliced into 3 cm wide strips with a sharp stainless steel knife sterilized in ethanol. The shredded cabbage was washed for 4 min in chlorinated (100 ppm NaOCl) water at 5°C (at a solid/ liquid ratio of 1:3) to remove released nutrients. Then the cabbage was rinsed with tap water for 4 min and centri-fuged for 1 min at a speed of 500 rpm.
The treatments were conducted in parallel and pre-pared for the same batch of product. To minimize prod-uct heterogeneity, processed cabbage was pooled, mixed and subsequently divided in four equal parts. The first part was imbibed in distilled water and was used as a