Antioxidants Bound to an Insoluble Food Matrix: Their Analysis, Regeneration Behavior, and Physiological Importance.

Dietary antioxidants play an important role in human health by counteracting oxidative stress and preventing chronic diseases. Most common dietary antioxidants in foods are vitamins, carotenoids, phenolic compounds, sulfur-containing compounds, and neoformed antioxidants. Antioxidants may be present in free soluble or bound insoluble forms in foods. Antioxidants bound to insoluble food matrices have gained the spotlight because they exert their antioxidant effects much longer than free soluble ones. A direct procedure called QUENCHER has been shown to accurately measure the antioxidant capacity of antioxidants bound to insoluble matrices. This procedure overcomes the drawbacks of extraction-dependent classical assays leading to underestimation of the total antioxidant capacity (TAC) of foods. This review focuses on antioxidants that are found naturally in foods or are formed in foods during processing specifically the antioxidants bound to the insoluble food matrices. The literature gap on the importance of bound antioxidants, their physiological relevance, and methods for measurement of their antioxidant capacity will be filled by this comprehensive review. In particular, chemical properties and health effects of food antioxidants, measurement of the TAC of foods by the QUENCHER method, digestion behavior of bound insoluble antioxidants, and their interactions with free soluble antioxidants are discussed throughout this review.