Grain Barn Natural Antioxidants To Replace Synthetic Food Preservatives
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Grain Barn Natural Antioxidants To Replace Synthetic Food Preservatives

In a recent discovery made by Researchers at Penn State, founded that natural antioxidant in grain bran could keep food fresh for longer and can replace the synthetic antioxidants which are currently used by the food industry. Andrew S. Elder, a doctoral candidate in food science stated the food industry is being pushed by the consumers to replace synthetic ingredients with natural alternatives. The fact that Consumers don’t recognize the synthetic ingredients used as food preservatives they want clean labels and synthetic chemical sounding ingredients removed.

A class of compound named alkylresorcinols AR is being studied by the Penn State Researchers. AR is released by plants such as Rye, Wheat naturally to prevent mold, bacteria and another organism from growing on the grain kernels. For the Researchers, the matter of concern is if ARs could also preserve food in the same way from a chemical standpoint.

More foods with healthy oils rich in the omega-3 fatty acid are being supplemented by the food industry along with more natural ingredients. Normally the food does not contain healthy oils, so adding these healthy oils to food can boost the health benefits of this

food to the consumers. Elder stated, omega-3s is consumed by most people from marine sources and as it breaks down, it makes the food smell stale & fishy which as an end result are being thrown by the consumers, resulting in economic loss. To prevent the food from spoilage and to preserve the health benefits the rate of degradation of omega 3 fatty acid is lowered down with the help of Antioxidants. More the demand increases for natural ingredients more difficulties are being faced by the food industry to find natural Antioxidants.

According to a review published in European Food Research and Technology ARs provides health benefits to the humans along with protection against cancer making them ideal natural additives. ARs comes from the bran layer of cereal plants which is usually discarded by the food industry or used as animal feed.

A technique was developed by the team to extract and purify ARs from rye bran and to analyze how well ARs were able to preserve omega-3 rich oils in emulsions were two fluids don’t mix fully.eg: vinegar and oil. Study about AR action in emulsions was chosen by the Researchers as most people consume oil as emulsions such as salad dressing.

In this round of experiment ARs did not work as well as other antioxidants it was noticed by the researchers that AR extracts were not pure which in turn could have reduced the effectiveness of ARs. Looking at Various types of ARs further in future it will be revealed whether an individual AR type is more effective or less effective than conventionally used antioxidants.