FOOD MATRICES FOR THE DELIVERY OF ANTIHYPERTENSIVE PEPTIDES IN FUNCTIONAL FOODS

Abstract

Many food-derived peptides with antihypertensive activity have been reported. However, a reduced number of studies have been conducted to prove in vivo the efficacy of most of the currently reported antihypertensive peptides. Thus, just a few of these bioactive peptides are utilized as supplements or ingredients for functional foods production. In addition to in vivo evaluations, another challenging task is the delivery of bioactive peptides in physiological conditions, but studies about this topic are scarce. Notably, some proteins are able to form gels that have different characteristics related to the pH of the environment. Bioactive peptides can be entrapped into such gels structure and be released in different physiological environments (e. g. low pH in the stomach and neutral in the intestine). Thus, the selection of macronutrients could play a critical role in the design of food matrices intended to be used as containers and releasers of antihypertensive peptides.