Impact of refrigerated storage on (bio)chemical conversions of health-related compounds in pretreated, pasteurized Brussels sprouts and leek

[Display omitted] •Profound health-related enzymatic conversions possible during vegetable processing.•Differences induced by pretreatment type remained after pasteurization and storage.•Glucosinolates are stable during pasteurization but degraded during cooled storage.•ACSOs degraded during pasteurization but remained stable during cooled storage.•Vitamin K1 concentration was not significantly impacted by any processing step. Vegetable processing often consists of multiple processing steps. Research mostly focused on the impact of individual processing steps on individual health-related compounds. However, there is a need for more holistic approaches to understand the overall impact of the processing chain on the health potential of vegetables. Therefore, this work studied the impact of pretreatment (relatively intact versus pureed vegetable systems), pasteurization and subsequent refrigerated storage (kinetic evaluation) on multiple health-related compounds (vitamin C, vitamin K1, carotenoids, glucosinolates and S-alk(en)yl-L-cysteine sulfoxides (ACSOs)) in Brussels sprouts and leek. It could be shown that differences introduced by different types of pretreatment were not nullified during pasteurization and refrigerated storage. Clearly, enzymatic conversions controlled during pretreatment resulted in different health-related compound profiles still observable after pasteurization. Moreover, about −42% and −100% relative concentration differences of ACSOs and dehydroascorbic acid, respectively, were detected immediately after pasteurization, while glucosinolates concentrations decreased by about 47% during refrigerated storage. All other compounds were stable during pasteurization and refrigerated storage.