**2. Materials and methods**

### **2.1. Vegetables treatments**

Fresh vegetables (carrots, cucumbers, beetroot, white cabbage, red cabbage) were purchased from a retail market and specifically processed by removing the non-edible pieces. The raw material processing was made faster, because the possibility of contamination and proliferation of microorganisms in the products is very high in comparison with their intact counterparts (Lee, 2011). Using a domestic extractor the vegetables were turned into juice. The heating treatment of the juice, applied at 800C with a view to destroy the undesirable microorganisms under the limit of detection, was followed by cooling at 400C.
