Phenolic compounds as natural alternatives to artificial food additives: coloring, preserving and bioactive agents
Conference Paper
Overview
Overview
abstract
Phenolic compounds represent a wide group of molecules with well-recognized beneficial properties
for human health. Beyond their worldwide use for bioactive purposes, these compounds have
been increasingly explored for food industry application. Indeed, several polyphenols have proved
effectiveness as colouring, preserving, and bioactive agents in foodstuff, which can represent a
great advance in food additives safety, once some artificial additives have associated risks to human
health [1]. In this context, and in an attempt to explore safer and effective alternatives, phenolic
compounds find great application as natural counterparts, specially flavonoids and phenolic acids.
Among the studied molecules, betalains (e.g. gomphrenin II, gomphrenin III, isogomphrenin II,
and isogomphrenin Ill) obtained from purple globe amaranth and anthocyanins (e.g. cyanidin,
delphinidin, and malvidin derivatives) from rose, dahlia, centaurea, strawberry-tree, roselle, and
blueberry were incorporated in ice-cream, yogurt, and waffles for colouring purposes [e.g. 2].
on the other hand, several polyphenols extracted from strawberry-tree, basil, lemon balm, sweet
chestnut flowers, fennel, and German chamomile were studied for their preservative properties
in loaf bread, cupcakes, yogurt, cheese, and cottage cheese, namely flavonoids (e.g. catechin,
and quercetin and luteolin derivatives), phenolic acids (e.g. rosmarinic, chicoric, lithospermic,
caffeic, and caffeoylquinic acids), and hydrolysable tannins (e.g. trigalloyi-HHDP-glucoside) [e.g. 3).
Regarding bioactive compounds, phenolic acids (e .g. rosmarinic acid), flavonoids
(e.g. quercetin derivatives), and ellagitannins (e.g. sanguiin H-10 and lambertianin)
from mushrooms, wild strawberry, rosemary, mountain sandwort, and flowers
of silva brava were introduced in gelatin, yogurt, and cottage cheese [e.g. 4].
Given the evidenced wide applicability of polyphenols, these natural molecules seem to be
promising alternatives to food artificial additives.
This work is funded by the European Structural and Investment Funds (FEEl) through the Regional Operational Program North 2020, within the scope of Project Mobilizador ValorNaturale!l and Project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-023289: DeCodE.
