## 3 Results and Discussion
### Juices
It was observed that for beet juice after the fermentation process, regardless of the method of fermentation, no changes in acidity values were visible, which is related to the low pH of the beetroot juice itself (pH about 5) before the fermentation process. Similar results were presented by [PERSON] et al. [39] for the lactic acid content in fermented beetroot juices (0.5 g/100 mL). In the case of fermented red pepper juice, the total acidity was twice as high as for the juice before fermentation and for the juice obtained by squeezing and mixing with the marinade. The content of lactic acid bacteria is an substantial parameter that determines the quality of fermented juices. The presence of LAB at the level of two log cycles was demonstrated in raw juices. The presence of 6.5-8.0 log CFU/g d.m. of LAB was found in fermented beetroot juices, whereas in juices squeezed from beetroot after fermentation and combined with marinade, the presence of LAB was demonstrated at a comparable level for the respective types of fermentation. Similar dependencies were shown in the case of pepper juices, but when it comes to spontaneous fermentation, the number of lactic acid bacteria after fermentation was higher than in the case of fermentation with the use of one type of bacteria. Both _L. brevis_ and _L. fermentutum_ grew in red bell pepper and beetroot juices. The color of juices differed depending on the raw material tested. The red beet juices were redder and darker compared to the red bell pepper juices, which is related to the content of specific pigments in those raw materials (Table 1). It was observed that the color components decreased after the fermentation process of the red beet juice, which means that the juices after the fermentation process were darker (L* decrease), less red (a* decrease), and much greener (b* decrease). The color components of the red bell pepper juice after fermentation increased, which means that the juices after the fermentation process were lighter (L* increase), blacker (a* increase), and definitely more yellow (b* increase). Changing the fermentation method into vegetable/fruit fermentation and then squeezing it and mixing it with water brine resulted in a statistically significant reduction in the value of redness (+a*) and yellowness/greenness (b*) for both juices, in addition to an increase in brightness (+L*). The color difference factor (\(\Delta\)E*) is a combination of all color coefficients related to the reference color coefficients. A comparison was made in the presented research with the raw juices, thus the differences after the fermentation process could be observed. It is stated that values below 5 mean there is no difference in color as seen with the human eye, values between 5 and 12 give information about minor variations of the color, and values above 12 mean that the color is totally different than the reference sample [5; 25; 40]. For both juice vegetables, the calculated factor of color differences (\(\Delta\)E*) was higher than 5. For fermented beetroot juices, the color difference factor was in the range from 4.7 to 10.7, which means that slight differences were seen and the juices were similar to the raw beetroot juice, however, the difference can be detected by the human eye. For red bell pepper, slight differences were observed for fermented juices (values from 6.6-7.3), whereas juices obtained from the fermented vegetable and mixed with marinade differed at first sight (values above 17) (Table 1). Analysis of the content of color pigments in red beetroot and red bell pepper showed the influence of the fermentation method on the pigment content (Figures 1 and 2). In beetroot juice, an increase in betacyanin content was observed for juices obtained by pressing fermented vegetables and using of marinade after fermentation (approximately from 316 for raw juice to 720-950 mg/100 g dm) and in both pigments (betacyanin and betaxanthin) obtained by spontaneous fermentation of beet juice (680 for betacyanin, 530 mg/100 g dm for betaxanthin) (Figure 1).