Bioactive Phenolic Compounds: Extraction Procedures and Methods of Analysis

摘要

Phenolic compounds are very important to the physiology of plants as well as humans because once ingested they have a protective role on the human body against oxidative stress, acting as antioxidants. Phenolic compounds have thousands of different structures and they are classified into families according to some characteristics.The evaluation of phenolic compounds is crucial and the methodologies used either for their extraction from the source materials or for their quantification are much variable and have great influence on the results. Hence, this chapter aims to introduce briefly some knowledge about phenolic compounds and the different categories, then to review some important aspects about the extraction methodologies reported in literature and the methods of analysis, namely the spectrophotometric technics, the chromatographic methods and some other recent methods. Furthermore, the antioxidant capacity is also addressed and the methods for its evaluation are also reviewed, namely those using Hydrogen Atom Transfer (HAT) or Single Electron Transfer (SET) reaction mechanisms.