Page 120 - Natural Antioxidants, Applications in Foods of Animal Origin

Potential Applications of Natural Antioxidants in Meat and Meat Products 99
VetBooks.ir 3.3 SYNTHETIC OR NATURAL?

Though there are several different types of available antioxidants, they can
be broadly grouped into two categories: natural and synthetic. While natural
antioxidants are those that can be harvested directly from any organic source
such as herbs, fruits, vegetables, and so forth, synthetic antioxidants are
compounds produced artificially and added to processed or pre-packaged
food to prevent rancidity, browning or to preserve the flavor and texture.
Synthetic antioxidants such as BHA, BHT, TBHQ, and PG have been widely
used in meat and meat products (Biswas et al., 2004; Formanek et al., 2001;
Jayathilakan et al., 2007) by the food processors as they are cheaper than
the natural ones. But the demand for natural antioxidants, especially of
plant origin has increased in the recent years due to the growing concern
among consumers about these synthetic antioxidants because of their poten-
tial toxicological effects (Naveena et al., 2008b). However, both of these
antioxidants differ in performance level; the effectiveness can be measured
by the number of peroxides formed in lipids over time and by their ability
to provide stability under different processing conditions. Both natural and
synthetic antioxidants act by donating electron density to fat and preventing
their oxidation but synthetic antioxidants have shown to possess a higher
performance than the natural ones. They differ in their fortification values
also. The natural antioxidants are known to have higher additional health
benefits in preventing cancer and heart diseases.

3.4 NATURAL ANTIOXIDANTS

Plants are persistently the generous source to supply man with valuable
bioactive substances (Tayel & El-Tras, 2012) and thus different plant prod-
ucts are being evaluated as natural antioxidants to improve the overall
quality of meat and meat products. The focus for using natural antioxidants
for the effective preservation of meat or meat products has almost exclu-
sively been on the use of plant phenolics or phenolic-containing extracts.
Phenolic compounds are plant secondary metabolites commonly found in
herbs and fruits, vegetables, grains and cereals, tea, coffee, and red and
white wines. Phenolic acids are phenols that possess carboxylic acid func-
tionality. Phenolic compounds can be broadly divided into two categories,
flavonoids and non-flavonoid polyphenols. Among phenolic compounds
found in plants, flavonoids are the most widely studied class of polyphenols
with respect to their antioxidant and biological activities. Flavonoids may be