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This paper aims to study the use of pumpkin pulp and its by-products in food formulation. Pumpkins are important and useful in the food industry. However, only the pulp is used, and the shell and seeds are wasted, which represents an important food waste.

A systematic review was performed by searching electronic databases relating to the physicochemical, textural and sensory effects of the pumpkin pulp and its by-products’ incorporation into foods. No human subjects were involved, and ethical approval was not required.

Pumpkin seeds and shell have been included in quite a variety of products. The primary effects on the physicochemical properties of bakery products, dairy products, beverages and snacks are the increase in energy, protein, iron, calcium, carotene content and textural properties (hardness, chewiness, snapping force and viscosity).

Limitations comprise the heterogeneity of the studies included, which causes varied results.

It was evidenced that pumpkin is already included in food products, especially in bakery products. However, there are not many products where the shell and seeds are used. Therefore, it is a field to be explored, as these by-products have great potential both to enrich food products and to reduce food waste contributing to sustainability.

Traditionally prepared enset-based products like bulla are characterised by low protein and vitamin contents and are highly viscous; this causes protein-energy malnutrition especially in infants and young children. This paper aims to improve the nutritional and sensory qualities of enset-based food with pumpkin and amaranth.

Sixteen formulations of composite flour were generated using a D-optimal constrained mixture design with a range of 50-80 per cent bulla, 10-25 per cent pumpkin and 10-40 per cent amaranth flour. Nutritional and sensory qualities of the formulations were investigated using standard methods.

Ash, fat and protein contents increased from 1.1-2.8 g/100 g (p < 0.001), 1.7-3.9 g/100 g (p < 0.001) and 6.1-9.0 g/100 g (p < 0.001) respectively with the increased amaranth flour. Crude fibre content increased with increasing percentage of the amaranth and pumpkin flours. On the other hand, carbohydrate content increased from 78.2 to 84.3 per cent (p < 0.001) with an increase of bulla flour. A significant increase in Fe, Zn and Ca from 6.8-10.5 (p < 0.01), 1.5-3.0 (p = 0.022) and 1.8-148.5 mg/g (p < 0.001) respectively was achieved with an increase in amaranth ratio in flour. The total carotenoid content increased with increase in the percentage of pumpkin flour. The best sensory attributes of the developed product were around the centre point of the three ingredients.

The study showed that a product with good nutritional value and sensory acceptability could be prepared from enset-based ingredients and the optimal product was obtained by blending 57.8 per cent bulla, 18.9 per cent pumpkin and 23.3 per cent amaranth flour. The enriched flour can have application for snack food preparation.

Pumpkins are a rich source of essential nutrients, namely, β-carotene, minerals and vitamins, and they are therefore suitable for making functional juice. This study aims to develop pumpkin-based functional juice and assess the acceptability of the product by various consumers. In total, 55 per cent of the panelists disliked the pumpkin juice because of its strong off-flavor. Consequently, different blends of pumpkin juice with mango, orange, strawberry and green apple juices were prepared and evaluated for global appreciation and descriptive sensory analysis.

Pumpkins, green apples, mangos, oranges and strawberries were obtained from the local market. Four mixtures of juices were prepared by mixing pumpkin and mango juice (750/250, v/v), pumpkin and green apple juice (750/250, v/v), pumpkin and orange juice (750/250, v/v) and pumpkin with strawberry and orange juice (750/125/125, v/v/v). The contents of moisture ash, fiber, carbohydrate, crude protein and lipids were estimated according to AOAC methods. β-Carotene, vitamin C and minerals were determined. A semi-trained panel consisting of 100 members assessed sensory characteristics of pumpkin juice and mixtures using a quantitative descriptive analysis method (QDA) for different attributes.

The findings show that the moisture, crude protein, fiber, ash and carbohydrate contents indicate that the developed pumpkin juice was rich in these essential nutrients. The fiber value in our study was lower than the value previously reported for pumpkin. The content of β-carotene and vitamin C in the developed pumpkin juice was considerably higher than that reported previously for fruits. The values of calcium and iron of the current study were much higher than those previously reported in vegetable juices and mixtures. The sensory results revealed that the developed pumpkin-based juice blends are acceptable by the consumers.

This study was carried out to develop a suitable formula for preparing functional juices from pumpkin, which is not consumed willingly by children and the elderly; the authors aimed to improve its taste and flavor by mixing it with different fruit juices. The results demonstrated that pumpkin juice is rich in essential nutrients such as vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, suggesting its health-promoting potential. Mixing pumpkin juice with mango juice or orange and strawberry juices significantly improved the sensory quality of the products. Strikingly, the formulated pumpkin juice mixtures received good acceptance and appreciation by children and the elderly, which could promote its use as a functional juice. Generally, pumpkin-based juice blends are rich in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants and can therefore be consumed as a functional beverage with potentially increased health-promoting characteristics. Using pumpkin for developing functional juices could add commercial value to pumpkins. Future studies should specifically focus on large-scale production and commercialization of these juice mixtures.

This study aims to understand pumpkin waste awareness among people by converting unstructured quantitative data into insightful information to understand the public's awareness of pumpkin waste during Halloween.

To fulfil the study's purpose, we extracted Halloween-related tweets by employing #halloween and #pumpkin hashtags and then investigated Halloween-related tweets via a topic modelling approach, specifically Latent Dirichlet Allocation. The tweets were collected from the UK between October 25th and November 7th, 2020. The analysis was completed with 11,744 tweets.

The topic modelling results revealed that people are aware of the pumpkin waste during Halloween. Furthermore, people tweet to reduce pumpkin waste by sharing recipes for using leftover pumpkins.

The study offers a novel approach to convert social media data into meaningful knowledge about public perception of food waste. This paper contributes to food waste literature by revealing people's awareness of pumpkin waste during Halloween using social media analytics. Norm activation model and communicative ecology theory are used for the theoretical underpinning of topic modelling.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the content of nutrients and minerals in various cultivars of Cucurbita maxima.

This is preliminary study, so eight samples from each cultivar of pumpkin used in this study were obtained from local farms from Poland. The following pumpkin cultivars were used: Australian butter, Flat white boer, Garbo, Golden delicious, Golden nugget, Hokkaido, Solor and Zapallito de tronco. In pumpkins elements, dry matter, ash and crude protein were determined. All elements were determined using Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometer. Content of dry matter, ash and crude protein according to AOAC methods.

The fruit of Cucurbita maxima, irrespective of cultivar, is a good means of supplementing the diet with highly beneficial fibre, and minerals such as potassium, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sulphur, silicon, iron and zinc. The pumpkins richest in minerals are those of the Australian butter cultivar (calcium, manganese, iron), Flat white boer (sodium, silicon, chromium, nickel), Hokkaido (potassium, phosphorus, zinc, chromium) and Solor (magnesium, sulphur, copper), while the Garbo, Golden Delicious and Zapallito de tronco cultivars had the lowest concentrations of minerals.

The results obtained indicate that depending on the consumer’s expectations, pumpkins of various cultivars can be a dietary component that corrects deficiencies in the diet. Pumpkins grown in Poland have been characterised in terms of the content of mineral elements. These vegetables have become an important component of local food in Poland.

The purpose of this paper is to review the nutritional and food value of pumpkin Cucurbita, along with different health benefits. Cucurbita (pumpkin) is an herbaceous vine, member of Cucurbitaceae family. It is an edible, heat-sensitive plant, which has an abundant amount of active compounds such as carotenoids, alkaloids, flavonoids, polyphenols, tannins, tocopherols, phytosterols and cucurbitacin, accounted for numerous health benefits, namely, antidiabetic, antioxidant, anticarcinogenic, hypotensive, hyper protective activities.

Major well-known bibliometric information sources such as Web of Science, Scopus, Mendeley and Google Scholar were searched with keywords such as nutrition value of Cucurbita, Cucurbita utilization, bioactive compounds of pumpkin, health benefits, processing, food formulations and current scenarios were chosen to obtain a large range of papers to be analyzed. A final inventory of 105 scientific sources was made after sorting and classifying them according to different criteria based on topic, academic field, country of origin and year of publication.

The comprehensive review of different literature, data sources and research papers seeks to find and discuss various nutritional benefits of pumpkin. It contains all necessary macro- and micro-nutrients, amino acids, vitamins, antioxidants and bioactive compounds with a relatively low amount of antinutrients. The recent upsurge in consumer interest for health-promoting products has opened up new vistas for plant products containing bioactive compounds in different food formulations.

This paper contains information regarding the chemical composition, nutritive value, phytochemical studies, pharmacological properties, bio-accessibility, food and industrial applications of pumpkin. Worldwide, pumpkin is used as food additive in various food products such as candy, weaning mix, corn grits, kheer, jam, crackers, bread, etc. Effect of different processing methods such as high temperature, pH, blanching, oven drying, freeze-drying to retain or minimize its losses in case of color, texture, flavor, and the carotenoids are of concern. The review paper highlights the nutritional, therapeutic, potential and processing attributes.

To reduce energy consumption, the time needed of drying, and the loss of ß-carotene content, and ascorbic acid content, response surface methodology (RSM) was employed for optimization.

To reduce energy consumption, the time needed of drying, and the loss of ß-carotene content, and ascorbic acid content, response surface methodology (RSM) was employed for optimization.

The results show that the optimum solar-assisted heat pump drying (SAHPD) conditions for drying pumpkin slice were: drying temperature of 67.40 °C, loading density of 1.05 kg/m³, and material thickness of 4 mm. Under these conditions, slice of pumpkin were dried in 440.637 min, where the unit energy consumption, ascorbic acid content, and ß-carotene content were 16.737 kJ/g, 25.682 mg/ (100–g dried sample), and 10.202 mg/g, respectively. The structure of the samples dried using the optimized SAHPD method exhibited a more complete cell morphology than those dried using heat pump drying when examined using scanning electronic microscopy.

This suggests that the optimized SAHPD conditions used in this study are important for production and processing.

This paper aims to characterize the pumpkin (Cucurbita sp) seed oil from the varieties Nova Caravela, Mini Paulista, Menina Brasileira (Cucurbita moschata) and Moranga de Mesa (Cucurbita maxima) as to their physicochemical properties, vitamins and fatty acid and triacylglycerols profiles.

The oils were extracted from oilseeds by the Bligh and Dyer (1959) method, and chemical characterization was performed by using standard methods for oils and fats. The vitamin A and E content, fatty acid profile and triacylglycerols profile also were determined.

About the chemical properties, the oils showed values within the range for edible vegetable oils. The oil from variety Nova Caravela stood out for presenting better quality, as it showed lower values of free fatty acids, acidity and peroxides. However, it was found that the Moranga de Mesa oil was the most unsaturated, due to the high refractive and iodine index, and was also reported to have lower oxidative stability. Among the unsaturated fatty acids, ranging from 70 to 78 per cent of the total obtained, linoleic and oleic acids stood out, while among the saturated ones, palmitic and stearic did.

These seeds are rich in high-quality lipids; therefore, their use could help to reduce the amount of waste produced in the industries, and consequently reduce environmental contamination. This study showed that the seeds could be used as a raw material for oil extraction, and also could be used for developing functional foods instead of being discarded.

This study provides valuable information about the quality and fatty acid contents of pumpkin seed oils consumed in Brazil.

Internal fluffy portion along with fibrous strands of ripe pumpkin is considered as waste in processing industries though it contains sufficient amount of ß-carotene pigment. The purpose of this paper is to use the leftover fluffy portion of ripe pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima) after the use of its flesh for the purpose of processing.

The data were analyzed statistically by following a complete randomized design (CRD). All analysis were performed using the software OPSTAT.

One hour pre-enzymatic treatment before solvent extraction showed significant improvement in extraction yield in comparison to the isolation of ß-carotene pigment through solvent only. Temperature time combination was optimized as 40°C for 2 h during solvent extraction to obtain maximum yield irrespective of the type of extraction method used.

Extracted carotene pigment can further be used as a natural food colorant in processed food products not only to enhance the color appeal but also it improves the nutritional value of the product as ß-carotene acts as a precursor of vitamin A.

Coloring agents of natural origin are becoming famous among society due to their health benefits. Consumers are becoming reluctant to use synthetic colors because of the undesirable allergic reactions caused by them, so carotene bio-pigment produced is a natural coloring compound with wide application in the food sector.

Even though few researchers have worked on the extraction of carotene pigment from pumpkin, but no researcher has reported the use of a waste fluffy portion of C. maxima for extraction of ß-carotene pigment.

This study aims to investigate the potential of pumpkin seed oil (PSO) and zinc to attenuate oxidative stress and neuroinflammation caused by chronic mild stress (CMS) in the cerebral cortex of male rats.

The rats were submitted to stress for six weeks and then the behavior of the rats was tested by forced swimming test (FST) and novel cage test. The treated groups were given venlafaxine (20 mg/kg), pumpkin seed oil (40 mg/kg) and zinc (4 mg/kg). The cortex homogenate was used for the detection of the oxidative stress parameters, the concentration of neurotransmitters, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin 1β (IL-1β), Na+/K+-ATPase activity, and the expression of histamine N-methyltransferase (Hnmt) and tyrosine hydroxylase (Th).

CMS causes a significant increase in immobility time in the FST and a significant decrease in the number of rearing in the novel cage test. CMS group showed a significant increase in alanine aminotransferase (ALT) activity, levels of cortisol, TNF-α, IL-1β, nitric oxide and malondialdehyde. CMS caused a significant decrease in the concentrations of serotonin, GABA, norepinephrine, and the activities of glutathione peroxidase, catalase, superoxide dismutase and Na⁺/K⁺-ATPase. CMS caused a marked reduction in the expression of Hnmt and Th in the cortex. PSO and zinc attenuated the Na⁺/K⁺-ATPase activity, oxidative parameters and neuroinflammation induced by the CMS, and this was reflected by the elevation of the concentration of neurotransmitters and reduction of cortisol and ALT, in addition to the behavior normalization. PSO and zinc attenuated the CMS by improving the antioxidant milieu and anti-inflammatory status of the cerebral cortex.

There are no studies on the effect of pumpkin seed oil on depression