Ex Vivo Antioxidant Capacities of Fruit and Vegetable Juices. Potential In Vivo Extrapolation.

Background: In support of claims that their products have antioxidant properties, the food industry and dietary supplement manufacturers rely solely on the in vitro determination of the ORAC (oxygen radical antioxidant capacity) value, despite its acknowledged lack of any in vivo relevance. It thus appears necessary to use tests exploiting biological materials (blood, white blood cells) capable of producing physiological free radicals, in order to evaluate more adequately the antioxidant capacities of foods such as fruit and vegetable juices.

Materials: Two approaches to assessing the antioxidant capacities of 21 commercial fruit and vegetable juices were compared: the ORAC assay and the "PMA-whole blood assay," which uses whole blood stimulated by phorbol myristate acetate to produce the superoxide anion.

Compared Phenolic Compound Contents of 22 Commercial Fruit and Vegetable Juices: Relationship to ex-vivo Vascular Reactivity and Potential in vivo Projection.

The real impact of polyphenol-rich vegetable and fruit juice intake on cardiovascular health remains a matter of controversy. In the present study, rat aorta segments immersed in an organ bath (OB) were used to explore whether the total polyphenol content and/or individual phenolic compound contents of 22 commercial vegetable ( = 3) and fruit juices [(citrus ( = 5), berries ( = 10), apple ( = 2), pineapple ( = 2)] might be associated with vascular tone. Red juices (particularly blackcurrant) and lemon juice caused the most marked vasorelaxation, its amplitude being endothelium dependent or not according to the volume ratio of juice to initial OB solution V/V).

The potency of commercial blackcurrant juices to induce relaxation in porcine coronary artery rings is not correlated to their antioxidant capacity but to their anthocyanin content.

Objective: Polyphenol-rich products such as fruit juices have been found to have strong antioxidant capacities and to induce potent endothelium-dependent relaxation. We evaluated whether the commercial blackcurrant juices induced endothelium-dependent relaxation of isolated coronary arteries can be related to their antioxidant capacity and/or phenolic content.

Methods: Six different commercial blackcurrant juices were selected.

Monitoring of anatabine release by methyl jasmonate elicited BY-2 cells using surface-enhanced Raman scattering.

A new application of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) in the field of plant material analysis is proposed in this study. The aim was to monitor the release of anatabine by methyl jasmonate (MeJa) elicited Bright Yellow-2 (BY-2) cells. Gold nanoparticles (AuNps) were used as SERS substrate.

Antioxidant potential of different plum cultivars during storage.

Plums, the most commonly consumed fruits from Romania, are fruits rich in bioactive compounds, such as antioxidants. This research work was carried out to investigate the antioxidant potential of twelve plum cultivars, fresh and stored during 10days at 4°C by using different methods (DPPH, ORAC and erythrocyte resistance to haemolysis). The contents of total phenolic compounds and total anthocyanins were also determined by specific spectrometric methods.