Journal of Food Processing & Technology

Antioxidant food factors are multifunctional

6^th Global Summit and Expo on Food & Beverages

August 03-05, 2015 Orlando-FL, USA

Tetsuya Konishi

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Food Process Technol

Abstract:

Currently, the third function of food attracted much attention that is pharmacological or physiological function. Thus the old tale ?foods are medicine? is revived and extended studies are being carried on the active ingredients in edible resources that is called food factor. It is turned out that the food factors generally show wide variety of functions in contrast to drugs as exemplified in curcumin, resveratrol and other polyphenols. Our studies on Schisandrin B (Sch B), isolated lignan from a medicinal herb Schisandra chinensis also showed variety of functions such as antioxidant, anti-inflammation, neuroprotective, cardiac dysfunction and antiaging. It also modulates many cellular signaling pathways. In addition, Sch B was found to interact rather strongly with ATR Kinase involved in cellular DNA damage checkpoint device. These findings suggest the differential function of food factors compared to drug attributes to this bifacial mode of action. One is a general and indirect action such as through its antioxidant activity and another is a direct action onto specific receptor leading to a respective activity. Based on this nature, the food factors applied for functional foods should be classified into two categories. One is mainly used for disease prevention (Mibyou treatment) and another is for clinical usage in complementary or integrated medicine. The essential requirement for the former functional food is the safety and the latter requires strict dose-response data, clear mechanism of action and in some case, ADME.