Antioxidant activity of functional beverage designed for old population and orange juice from different steps of the concentrated juice processing

• Grant number: 10/16366-6
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: May 01, 2011
• End date: April 30, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Food Science and Technology - Food Science
• Principal Investigator: Magali Conceição Monteiro da Silva
• Grantee: Magali Conceição Monteiro da Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas (FCFAR). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Natália Soares Janzantti

Abstract

The old population is increasing fast throughout the world. In Brazil, there was an increasing of the elderly of almost 700% in less than 50 years, with projections of 30 million people in 2020. The aging process has been associated with the decline of the immune response, being able to induce to a less effective immune response, indicating that the elderly are more susceptible to infections and other diseases. Diets rich in fruits and vegetables with high levels of vitamin C and phenolic compounds are associated to the prevention of the oxidative stress, which increases the risk of neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases, and some functional decline of the body. Echinacea, that shows high antioxidant activity, able to stabilize free radicals, so preventing the oxidative stress, is being used to treat respiratory tract diseases, improving and reducing the incidence symptoms, time and severity of infections.Brazil is the first orange producer and also the first frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ) producer of the world, besides leader of FCOJ exportation. The processing of orange juice and the storage conditions can change the antioxidant activity, the physicochemical and nutritional characteristics of the juice. The magnitude of these changes allows evaluating the impact of different steps of orange juice processing on the final quality of the juice.The objective of this project is to evaluate the total antioxidant activity, the total phenolic compounds and the physicochemical characteristics of the orange juice from different steps of the FCOJ processing and of the beverage prepared with orange and acerola juice and Echinacea, developed for the elderly. (AU)