Distributions of phenolic acid antioxidants between the interfacial and aqueous regions of corn oil emulsions-a commentary

Abstract

Being capable of optimizing the usage of antioxidants is a challenge for any industry concerned with formulating food and non-food products because it will affect its competitiveness and the product's attractiveness in response to consumer demand. This is also a challenge for scientists who remain puzzled by the unpredictable oxidative behavior of real, complex food, and non-food matrices. Laurence Romsted and Carlos Bravo-Diaz have developed some years ago a pseudophase kinetic model to determine the partitioning of chain-breaking antioxidants in micellar systems and emulsions stabilized by surfactants. In this article, with Sonia Lasada-Barreiro they used the pseudophase model to determine the partitioning of two phenolic antioxidants (gallic acid and caffeic acid) in a model oil-in-water emulsion with increasing surfactant concentrations and at different pH values. This commentary underlines the importance of the pseudo-phase model and the present work to achieve a better use of antioxidants. It is also suggested that the enigma of antioxidant efficiency in complex systems is far from completely solved. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH