The study showed that fruit juices may successfully replace
currently used acidity regulators, which would be of special value
in the case of functional food production. The best fruit based
acidity regulator turned out to be the blue-berried honeysuckle
juice. Not only it displayed comparable ability to control pH as citric
acid, but also ensured the highest antioxidant activity of the final
mixtures. In the case of beetroot juice as a model food item, such a
combination exhibited the strongest cytotoxic effect against cancer
cells, but also gave the final food product an interesting flavor.
Moreover, blue-berried honeysuckle juice enriched the mixture in a
number of bioactive phytochemicals characterized by a range of
reported chemopreventive properties that may have a very positive
impact on consumers' health. The only drawback is the high cost of
blue-berried honeysuckle due to rather limited harvest and low
availability of this plant. Thus, the economic issues can restrict the
potential production of acidity regulators based on extracts from
this fruit. However, also very promising seemed sea buckthorn juice
and mirabelle plum juice. Both of these plants are known for their
positive impact on human health and in the presented experiments
exhibited very close capacity of controlling pH of food products to
citric acid. For economic reasons and because of the widespread
occurrence, a minor degree of current utilization, and apparent ease
of collection, mirabelle plum appears to be a replacement of current
acidity regulators particularly worthy of interest.