As a natural source of antioxidants, fruits, vegetables and plant-based foods are considered essential for human diet and health.

Antioxidants are one of the most important health promoting food components. The health benefit of this type of compounds resides in their ability to fight against oxidative stress in living organisms.

These antioxidants come mainly from polyphenols (flavonoids, anthocyanins, proanthocyanidins), carotenoids and vitamins.

 

Fruits, vegetables and their derived products are used to develop novel foods and beverages, juices, supplements, natural cosmetics, among other products.

Nowadays, natural antioxidants are also highly demanded by agri-food industries to produce functional foods and to replace synthetic antioxidants due to safety concerns. Synthetic antioxidants have been extensively used in the agri-food sector as additives to prevent the oxidative degradation of food products.

Many companies now promote the high antioxidant content of products in marketing campaigns.

Antioxidant claims are currently used by food companies to promote the health benefits of the products containing this type of compounds.

In this context, measuring the antioxidant capacity of fruits, vegetables and plant-based foods is crucial

  • For ensuring the quality and safety of these products while maintaining the availability of natural antioxidants and other nutrients, during the production, processing and storage processes.
  • To perform shelf-life and design new strategies in order to improve the nutritional value.
  • To select high-quality raw materials and for revalorization processes that use antioxidant rich by-products

 

As the antioxidant capacity of a complex mixture of antioxidants is not only the sum of the antioxidant activities exerted by the individual components, evaluate the antioxidant potential of foods and beverages is essential.

TAC (Total antioxidant Capacity) is a global measure of the non-enzymatic antioxidant activity that integrates the individual effect of all antioxidants in a given matrix, and their additive, synergistic or antagonistic interactions.

TAC can be evaluated with classical spectrophotometric assays or with BQC Devices.

 

BQC BRS device is the first electrochemical portable device designed to measure TAC of agri-food products.

BRS allows a simple, precise, cheap and fast measurement of TAC in a drop of sample. It is suitable for colour and turbid samples and does not modify the sample native conditions.

It is a rapid, easy and low cost tool that allow quick decision-making in quality control, shelf-life studies, screening new additives, etc.

Check the table the TAC values of some food samples using the BRS Device ➜