**5. Conclusions**

Vegetable products are pivotal in human health and their daily consumption is highly recommended due to their high content in phytochemicals with diverse beneficial health effects. The vegetable crops presented in this review, namely leafy and fruit vegetables and species where other plant parts are consumed, are well known and widely consumed throughout the world, although their colored variants are not always accepted by consumers and proper marketing is needed to introduce them to the public. Currently, the food and beverage industry is seeking for natural alternatives of synthetic compounds to satiate market demands for "non-chemical additives" food products. Therefore, the broad color palette the presented vegetables exhibit not only could diversify human diet and make food products more attractive to consumers and increase their appeal, but also could be proved as valuable sources of natural coloring agents. Under the circumstances, future research should focus on the identification of those promising coloring agents and the establishment of efficient and sustainable techniques for their isolation. Other future requirements, include breeding and agronomic protocols that could improve pigments content in the final produce, as well as post-harvest and processing conditions to increase extraction efficiency of natural coloring agents. Finally, the mechanisms of actions related with the health effects and antioxidant activities of coloring compounds have to be revealed and valorized in the pharmaceutical and food industry for the design of novel functional foods and drugs.

**Funding:** This work was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Hatch Appropriations under Project #PEN04723 and Accession #1020664; The authors are grateful to Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) and FEDER under Programme PT2020 for financial support to CIMO (UID/AGR/00690/2019); to FEDER-Interreg España-Portugal programme for financial support through the project 0377\_Iberphenol\_6\_E and TRANSCoLAB 0612\_TRANS\_CO\_LAB\_2\_P; the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Regional Operational Program North 2020, within the scope of project Mobilizador Norte-01-0247-FEDER-024479: ValorNatural®.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
