Study On The Maillard Reaction And The Anti-oxidative Activity Of Its Products

Most of the chemical additives previously used in food were synthetic phenolic compounds, such as tert-Butylhydroquinone(TBHQ), Butylated hydroxyanisole(BHA), Butylated hydroxtoluene (BHT) and Tocopherol (AH2) and so on. BHA, BHT, AH2 have already been forbidden in many countries because of their potential toxicities. And the application of TBHQ also has been limited. Therefore, to find non-toxic food anti-oxidant, especially natural anti-oxidant for the use in food industry has attracted great attention.The Maillard reaction is a reaction between amino (amino acid and protein) and carbonyl compounds in food during storage, preparation, or processing of foods. The Maillard Reaction Products (MRPs) are very complex composing melanoidin, reductone and a series of sulfur or nitrogen volatile heterocyclic compounds. It has been reported that the volatile heterocyclic compounds showed anti-oxidative activity, and in some cases the activity was as good as that of conventional antioxidants.The recent progress of Maillard Reaction was firstly reviewed in this thesis, and the reaction conditions for preparing the MRPs which showed high anti-oxidative activity were explored. And the influences of initial pH, reaction time, and molar ratio of reactions of the sugar (D-glucose and D-xylose) and the amino acid (lysine and glycine) on the anti-oxidative activity of the MRPs were examined in aqueous solution. The anti-oxidative activities of the above four systems of MRPs were measured and compared with that of TBHQ. It was found that the MRPs from lysine and D-xylose exhibited higher anti-oxidative activity than those of the other systems.