5. Conclusion
Fruits and vegetables have naturally a high vitamin C content and therefore are major dietary sources consumed fresh, and also to a lesser but significant extent in a processed form (EFSA., 2013). We have demonstrated the suitability of a probabilistic model, in the same vein as models aimed at food safety assessment, for prediction of micronutrient loss during food processing. This new approach in food technology and food chemistry has the potential to answer poorly solved question, such as the nature of the most influential operation in a whole processing chain or of the most detrimental data gaps. The statistical prediction of changes in concentrations of a major micronutrient proposed in this work could be generic and its application to other food-micronutrient-process combinations may also reveal to food processors and food scientists potentially efficient interventions for the improvement of the nutritional value of processed foods.