High Quality of Life ... Antioxidants

Continued from Yesterday

Key Challenges

Antioxidants have broad appeal because they have been linked to good health and disease prevention. Educating consumers about antioxidants with solid, easy-to-understand science can be a challenge—many marketers simply tout that antioxidants help protect the body against oxidative damage caused by free radicals. “Properly promoting these key nutrients, however, requires taking scientific evidence and presenting it to the consumer in a simple, understandable manner,” stressed Soft Gel’s Mr. Holtby.

With the recent upsurge in FDA/FTC warning letters pertaining to inaccurate or excessive antioxidant claims in food products (Lipton, POM Wonderful are some recent examples), companies are likely to be more careful with their messaging in 2011.

“This fear of antioxidant claims may cause a slowdown in the market trend for antioxidants in foods as companies choose to be more careful about what they say,” RFI’s Mr. Wuagneux stated.

But doing scientific studies won’t necessarily allow companies to make claims Mr. Wuagneux said. “POM Wonderful had studies and they were called on it by FTC; in fact POM is filing suit against them. Instead of using the word ‘antioxidant’ companies can make content claims with words like ‘polyphenols’ or ‘flavonoids.’ These words are almost mainstream and are fairly well-known to be antioxidant compounds. It may also be possible to discuss ‘free radical scavenging’ instead of ‘antioxidants.’”

Mr. Wuagneux further noted that the way manufacturers respond to this issue would depend considerably on the resolution of the dispute between POM and FTC.

The ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) assay continues to be a challenge. This testing method places an antioxidant “value” on both foods and supplements by measuring the degree to which a sample inhibits the action of an oxidizing agent and how long it takes. ORAC testing has made a significant impact on the industry’s ability to quantify antioxidant performance.

“The ORAC assay measures the fluorescence of a target attacked by free radicals, Sabinsa’s Dr. Prakash explained. “It typically uses a single concentration of antioxidant or extract, should be conducted at a range of concentrations and the reaction conditions should be carefully controlled.”

For example, she said some test substances are sensitive to light and temperature, so samples stored in brown bottles under refrigeration give different results than those left on the bench top in clear glass.

Another problem with ORAC is the interaction of the sample with the fluorescein reagent used in the test. Some phenols bind to it, probably through hydrogen bonding or pi interactions, preventing decay of fluorescein fluorescence. “When this happens,” Dr. Prakash said, “the test overestimates antioxidant activity, giving extraordinarily high ORAC values that are unrelated to actual radical scavenging activity.”

Test tube ORAC values also don’t tell the full tale of the “power” of an antioxidant.“

The more aggressively the test tube ORAC value is used for marketing a product, the more obvious it becomes that nothing else was ever tested on the product,” commented Frank Schonlau, director of scientific communications for Natural Health Science in Chicago, IL. “Key issues that come into play are ingredient specifications, safety data, bioavailability, stability testing and clinical research. Test tube ORAC values can mislead consumers to believe a product is validated.”

In fact, the ORAC value of the blood of human subjects can be investigated before and after consumption of antioxidants to evaluate their efficacy. Such experiments have been repeatedly carried out with Pycnogenol and are published in peer-reviewed medical journals (i.e., Devaraj et al., Lipids, 2002). “Such ORAC investigations in humans in controlled clinical trials will require a budget of $100,000 compared to $100 for a test tube ORAC assay, ” Mr. Schonlau added. “Yet such clinical studies are much more compelling because they prove the antioxidant is bioavailable and indicate the dosage required to exert an effect in the body.”

Continued Tomorrow

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