JP2000336355A - Antioxidant - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an antioxidant which has excellent oxidation resistance and excellent safety, scarcely has a smell and a taste, and is originated from a natural substance. SOLUTION: This antioxidant comprises the water-containing organic solvent extract of vanilla beans. The water-containing organic solvent is preferably water-containing ethanol. When vanilla bean residues obtained after the extraction of a perfume or spice from the vanilla beans is especially used, the antioxidant scarcely containing a flavor and a taste and capable of being used for general purposes is obtained. The antioxidant plentifully contains natural polyphenols, is rich in safety, and is suitable as an antioxidant for foods and drinks.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[0001] The present invention relates to an antioxidant rich in natural polyphenols. The antioxidant of the present invention is excellent in safety and is an antioxidant suitable for being added to food and drink.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art L-ascorbic acid, dl-α-tocopherol and the like have been conventionally used as antioxidants for foods and drinks. Coffee extracts and the like containing acids have been developed as natural extracts having antioxidant properties.

[0003]

Although these antioxidants are excellent in safety, they have a peculiar flavor, so that their use in foods and drinks is limited. Therefore, development of a natural antioxidant which has a strong antioxidant action, is safe and has as little flavor as possible is desired.

[0004]

Means for Solving the Problems As a result of intensive studies to solve the above problems, the present inventors have found that a water-containing organic solvent extract of vanilla beans has strong antioxidant properties.
It has been known that vanillin, the main flavor component of vanilla beans, has antioxidant properties.However, since the antioxidant properties are very weak, the strong antioxidant properties of the above vanilla extract depend on substances other than vanillin. As a result of research, it was found that the vanilla extract contained abundant compounds called so-called polyphenols, and that strong antioxidant properties were due to these compounds, which led to the completion of the present invention. Accordingly, the present invention comprises an antioxidant comprising a water-containing organic solvent extract of vanilla beans.

[0005] Vanilla beans used in the present invention include so-called green beans immediately after fruiting, fully aged beans or scum extracted from spice extracts. Immediately after fruiting, green beans are expected to be a raw material for versatile antioxidants because they produce less vanillin and have less flavor of vanilla, but when manufactured in Japan, aged vanilla beans are considered to be stable due to their availability. It is advantageous as a raw material. Slag obtained by extracting a spice extract from vanilla beans is advantageous in terms of effective utilization of unused resources and costs, and the resulting extract has the advantage of having less flavor and being more versatile.

The organic solvent used in the present invention is not particularly limited as long as it is an organic solvent miscible with water. Lower alcohols such as methanol, ethanol, propanol and isopropanol, ethylene glycol, propylene glycol, glycerin, etc. And polyhydric alcohols, acetone and the like can be used. One or a combination of two or more of these can be used, but ethanol is preferably used. These organic solvents are used by mixing with water. The mixing ratio of the organic solvent and water affects the antioxidant activity of the extract. The mixing ratio (weight) of the organic solvent and water is approximately 100: 5-900, and 100: 30-30.
0 is preferred. The extraction is performed, for example, in the case of extraction with a hot water-ethanol mixed solvent system (50:50 weight ratio), in the case of vanilla beans 100
1000 parts by weight of the mixed solvent with respect to parts by weight,
The treatment is carried out at 80 ° C. for several minutes to several hours, preferably for 30 to 60 minutes, and the extract obtained by filtration is concentrated under reduced pressure. Further, the concentrated liquid can be made into a powder by spray drying or the like.

[0007] The extracted antioxidant may be either a concentrated solution or a powder depending on the use of the food. In addition, when the flavor unique to vanilla may impair the flavor of the food or drink depending on the use of the food or drink, the antioxidant may be further purified by an appropriate treatment. Examples of the purification method include known purification methods such as column chromatography of silica gel, activated carbon and a synthetic polymer adsorbent. On the other hand, these antioxidants often exhibit excellent effects due to the synergistic action between the antioxidants. Therefore, it is more important to focus on the development of the overall effect of multiple components, rather than separating individual antioxidant components. Therefore, the present inventors measured the antioxidant ability of the extract of the present invention from vanilla beans using the DPPH radical scavenging activity as an index. As a result, it was confirmed that these extracts had a stronger antioxidant effect than vanillin. The antioxidant of the present invention is non-toxic to the human body, and there is no particular limitation on the proportion added to food and drink. It is preferable to add about 0.001 to 10% by weight, preferably about 0.01 to 1% by weight, in consideration of the characteristics or economy of the food or drink.

[0008]

EXAMPLE 1 100 g of 99% by weight ethanol was added to 10 g of aged vanilla beans (manufactured by Madagascar) cut to a width of about 3 mm, and the mixture was extracted with heating under reflux for 1 hour. After cooling to room temperature, the extraction residue was removed with filter paper. The solvent was distilled off from the obtained extract under reduced pressure to obtain 2.1 g of a solid extract. At this time, the vanillin content was 6.7%.

Example 2 Instead of 99% by weight of ethanol in Example 1, 50% by weight
The same operation as in Example 1 was performed, except that the same amount of aqueous ethanol was used, to obtain 3.2 g of a solid extract. At this time, the vanillin content was 6.0%.

Example 3 In place of 99% by weight ethanol of Example 1, 25% by weight
Except that the same amount of aqueous ethanol was used, the same operation as in Example 1 was performed to obtain 2.9 g of a solid extract. At this time, the vanillin content was 6.1%.

Example 4 Instead of 99% by weight ethanol of Example 1, 10% by weight
Except that the same amount of aqueous ethanol was used, the same operation as in Example 1 was performed to obtain 2.9 g of a solid extract. At this time, the vanillin content was 5.4%.

Example 5 100 g of 50% by weight aqueous ethanol was added to the extract of vanilla beans obtained in Example 1, and extraction was performed again in the same manner as in Example 1 to obtain 1.7 g of a solid extract. At this time, the vanillin content was 3.3%.

Test Example 1 The antioxidant properties of the solid extracts, vanillin, and commercially available rosemary extract (containing 45% of the active ingredient) of Examples 1 to 5 were evaluated. Specifically, the method of Uchiyama et al.
678 (1968)], the radical scavenging action of the test substance was measured by the following method. 0.1 M acetate buffer solution (pH 5.
5, 2.0 mL), a 50% by volume aqueous ethanol solution (2.0 mL) of a test substance and 2 × 10 ⁻⁴ M DPPH (1,1-
Diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl, Nacalai Tesque) ethanol solution (1 mL) was added to make a total volume of 5 mL.
At 0 minutes, the decrease in absorbance at 517 nm was measured. The results were expressed in terms of the amount of test substance (μg) required to reduce the absorbance of the control without the test substance to １ ／.

[0014]

[Table 1]

Example 6 100 g of 50% by weight ethanol was added to 10 g of aged vanilla beans (made in Madagascar) cut to a width of about 3 mm, and the mixture was extracted at 90 ° C. for 1 hour in a sealed can. After cooling to room temperature,
The extraction residue was removed with filter paper. The solvent was distilled off from the obtained extract under reduced pressure to obtain 3.6 g of a solid extract. At this time, the vanillin content was 5.3%.

Example 7 The same operation as in Example 6 was carried out except that the extraction temperature in Example 6 was changed to 80 ° C., to obtain 3.3 g of a solid extract. At this time, the vanillin content was 5.9%.

Example 8 The same operation as in Example 6 was carried out except that the extraction temperature was changed to 70 ° C., to obtain 2.9 g of a solid extract. At this time, the vanillin content was 5.9%.

Example 9 The same operation as in Example 6 was carried out except that the extraction temperature was changed to 60 ° C., to obtain 2.5 g of a solid extract. At this time, the vanillin content was 6.1%.

Example 10 The same operation as in Example 6 was carried out except that the extraction temperature was changed to 50 ° C., to obtain 2.1 g of a solid extract. At this time, the vanillin content was 6.6%.

Example 11 The same operation as in Example 6 was carried out except that the extraction temperature in Example 6 was changed to 30 ° C., to obtain 1.5 g of a solid extract. At this time, the vanillin content was 8.0%.

Test Example 2 The solid extracts of Examples 6 to 11 were evaluated for antioxidant properties and flavor. The flavor was evaluated by evaluating each solid extract to 0.02.
A syrup containing 10% sugar was prepared, with 5% added, and a panel of 5 described the flavor characteristics. The test results are shown in Table 2.

[0022]

[Table 2]

[0023]

According to the present invention, there is provided an antioxidant comprising a water-containing organic solvent extract of vanilla beans. The antioxidant of the present invention is rich in natural polyphenols, has excellent antioxidant properties and safety, and has little flavor, so that it can be added to a wide range of foods and drinks.

Claims (3)

[Claims] An antioxidant comprising a water-containing organic solvent extract of vanilla beans. 2. The antioxidant according to claim 1, wherein the aqueous organic solvent is aqueous ethanol. 3. The antioxidant according to claim 1, wherein the vanilla beans are scum obtained by extracting a flavor or spice extract.