Bio-antioxidants Activity: Their Mechanisms and Measurement Methods

Bioactive food components (such as phenolic compounds, carotenoids, anthocyanins, tochopherols, ascorbic acid, flavonoids, minerals, enzymes and pectin) are active ingredients in food or dietary supplements, which proven to have an important role in health, and are safe for human consumption. These compounds exert their antioxidant effects by different mechanisms such as single electron transfer or hydrogen atom transfer, and their efficiencies can be evaluated by several methods such as ferric reducing ability of plasma, oxygen radical absorbance capacity assay, total radical trapping antioxidant parameter, total oxidant scavenging capacity, conjugated dienes, lipoxygenase activity inhibition assay, chemiluminescence, deoxyribose, tocopheroxyl radical attenuating ability, and nitric oxide radicals trapping. In this review, these mechanisms and methods will be discussed in details.