Ohmic hearing may provide an effective method for blanching, especially of whole large vegetables where the process may be accomplished in a relatively short time regardless of the shape and the size of the product. Such a process eliminates any need for dicing of these large vegetables as commonly noire prior to water blanching. The extent of solute leaching during blanching by both ohmic hearing and by hot water follows the same pattern. It is proportional to the surface to volume ratio of the product and to the square root of the process time. Therefore, by eliminating the need for dicing, blanching by ohmic heating may considerably reduce the extent of solute leaching, as compared to a hot water process, by a favorable combination of a low surface to volume ratio and a short blanching rime. For example, in the case of whole beets, tile extent of soluble pigment loss during blanching by ohmic heating was about one or del of magnitude lower than that of I cm cubes of the same product during the equivalent process in hot water.