Elsevier

Journal of Food Composition and Analysis

Volume 19, Issues 6–7, September–November 2006, Pages 531-537
Journal of Food Composition and Analysis

Critical Review
Spice antioxidants isolation and their antiradical activity: a review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfca.2004.11.005Get rights and content

Abstract

Antioxidant compounds in food play important roles as health-protecting factors. Antioxidants are also widely used as additives in fats and oils and in food processing to prevent or delay spoilage of foods. Spices and some herbs have received increased attention as sources of many effective antioxidants. This review presents some information about the most common and most-used spice antioxidants, methods of their preparation and describes their antioxidant/antiradical properties.

Introduction

The number of contributions to isolation methods, techniques and activity testing of plant-origin antioxidants has significantly increased in recent years. Oxidation is one of the major causes of chemical spoilage, resulting in rancidity and/or deterioration of the nutritional quality, colour, flavour, texture and safety of foods (Antolovich et al., 2002). There is at present increasing interest both in the industry and in scientific research for spices and aromatic herbs because of their strong antioxidant and antimicrobial properties, which exceed many currently used natural and synthetic antioxidants. These properties are due to many substances, including some vitamins, flavonoids, terpenoids, carotenoids, phytoestrogens, minerals, etc. and render spices and some herbs or their antioxidant components as preservative agents in food (Calucci et al., 2003).

Except basic plant antioxidants some specific ones are characteristic for some important aromatic herbs and spices. Some examples of specific antioxidants are pimentol from allspice; gallates, biflorin, its isomer eugenol and eugenyl acetate in clove (Anon, 1997; Lee and Shibamato, 2001; Peter, 2000); carnosol, carnosic acid, rosmanol, rosmaridiphenol, rosmadial and rosmariquinone, and various methyl and ethyl esters of these substances in rosemary and sage (Bandoniené et al., 2002a,b; Pizzale et al., 2002); diarylheptanoids, gingerol and zingerone in ginger (Kikuzaki and Nakatani, 1993; Peter, 2000); curcumin and tetradehydrocurcumin in turmeric (Relajakshmi and Narasimhan, 1996); flavonides, ferulic acid, piperine, phenolic amide feruperine in black pepper (Peter, 2000; Shahidi and Wanasundara, 1992; Nakatani et al., 1986); thymol and carvacrol in essential oils from Algerian origanum (Ruberto et al., 2002); derivatives of phenolic acids, flavonoids, tocopherols, rosmarinic acid and carvacrol in oregano (Peter, 2000; Pizzale et al., 2002); etc. According to a phytochemical database (USDA, 2003), the number of different antioxidants in some plants can reach up to 40 (soybean 42, tea 36, fennel 35, oregano 34, onion 32, thyme 32, etc). In this database, plants with the highest contents of antioxidants are walnut, betel nut, guava, coconut, and other less known plants. A list of some known substances with antioxidant activity in some very common spices is reported in Table 1. More information is available for examples on USDA food antioxidant database (USDA, 2003).

Section snippets

Methods of antioxidant isolation from spices

Spices can be added to foods in several forms: as whole spices, as ground spices, or as isolates from their extracts. Spices are aromatic and pungent food ingredients, therefore, their direct use as antioxidants is limited. The extraction procedure is determined by the types of antioxidant compounds to be extracted. Selection of a suitable extraction procedure can increase the antioxidant concentration relative to the plant material. For polyphenols and other antioxidants in plant materials

Antioxidant/antiradical activity of isolated chemicals from spices

A variety of tests expressing antioxidant potency of food components has been suggested. These can be categorized into two groups: assays for radical scavenging ability and assays that test the ability to inhibit lipid oxidation under accelerated conditions (Schwarz et al., 2001). The features of an oxidation are a substrate, an oxidant and an initiator, intermediates and final products. Measurement of any of one of these can be used to assess antioxidant activity (Antolovich et al., 2002).

Conclusion

In view of the diversity of methods used for spice and herb antioxidant isolation and their activity determination, there is a great need to standardize them for both these measurements. The search for more specific assays that give us chemical information, which could be related directly to oxidative deterioration of foods and biological systems, should be the objective of future research. Modern consumers ask for natural products, free of synthetic additives. Therefore, the application of

Acknowledgement

This work was conducted with the support of Slovak State subprogram of Research No. 2003SP270280E010280E01, “Food quality and safety”.

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