Anthocyanin Enigma

Betül Bay Yılmaz^1*, Hatice Pekmez¹ , Nüzhet Türker²

1. Department of Food Processing, Naci Topcuoglu Vocational High School, Gaziantep University, 27180 Gaziantep, Turkey.
2. Department of Food Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Mersin, Mersin 33343, Turkey.

Abstract: The color is the first quality characteristic of a food product which highly affect the consumer acceptance. Therefore, synthetic colorants have been used to improve the appeal of the food products because of having high stability with respect to oxygen, light, pH and temperature. In recent years, the legal restrictions applied to the use of synthetic colorants, due to the reason of causing serious health problems. So, food manufacturers have replaced the synthetic food colorants by their natural alternatives. Anthocyanins are water-soluble coloring pigments in fruits and vegetables responsible for the characteristic color ranging from blue to red. Anthocyanins have been used to color confectionary, jam and jellies, ice cream, fruit preparations, yoghurt, desserts and bakery fillings. In addition, anthocyanin extract may improve the nutritional quality of food and beverages. Thus, there has been a great interest in anthocyanins not only their colorant abilities and aesthetic value, but also their beneficial effect from a nutritional standpoint and their potential role in reducing the risk of coronary heart disease, cancer and stroke. Anthocyanins’ usage in folk medicine have an important role in treatment of diarrhea, vision disorders and microbial infections. However, the main drawbacks in applications of anthocyanins in food matrix due to low stability to pH and temperature, incompatibility with food matrix, color loss during food and beverage processing and storage. Researches indicate that the main mechanism providing color stability is the molecular interaction between anthocyanins and co-pigments. The most effective way of this interaction is provided with the acylation of aliphatic and/or aromatic over the anthocyanidin nucleus via a sugar molecule, intra-molecular co-pigmentation. On the other hand, it is possible to improve the stability by the inter-molecular non-covalent interaction between anthocyanin and co-pigment molecules. The present study aimed to review beneficial effects, usage area, structure and stability of anthocyanins.

Keywords: anthocyanin, bioactive compounds, structure of anthocyanins, stability of anthocyanins.

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