Polyphenol Antioxidant - Difficulty in Analyzing Effects of Specific Chemicals

Difficulty in Analyzing Effects of Specific Chemicals

It is difficult to evaluate the physiological effects of specific natural phenolic antioxidants, since such a large number of individual compounds may occur even in a single food and their fate in vivo cannot be measured. For example, over sixty different chemically distinct flavonoids are known to occur in a given red wine. The polyphenol content of wines is usually evaluated by the Folin-Ciocalteu reagent which correlates well with alternative chemical and biological procedures for determining antioxidant potential.

Other more detailed chemical research has elucidated the difficulty of isolating individual phenolic antioxidants. Because significant variation in phenolic content occurs among various brands of tea, there are possible inconsistencies among epidemiological studies implying beneficial health effects of phenolic antioxidants of green tea blends. The Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) test is a laboratory indicator of antioxidant potential in foods and dietary supplements. However, ORAC results cannot be confirmed to be physiologically applicable.

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