Functional properties of a new spread based on olive oil and honeybees

Abstract

A new alimentary concept has been developed since the 80's. This one is called "functional food". In this context, the olive oil and honey are traditionally used in their initial state as a basic food. They are considered as a potential source of new bioactive products from which we can formulate several functional foods. This work will focus on the elaboration of a new spread of honey and olive oil using beeswax as an emulsifier. Physical-chemical characterization, antioxidant and antibacterial activity were evaluated. As for the phenols content, spreads prepared from thyme honey has the highest content (337 mg GAE/kg) compared to other spreads. The antioxidant activity was evaluated by three different methods namely: DPPH test, ABTS + test and the iron reduction method (FRAP) which proves that this last has a higher activity than the other spreads (EC50 of 70 mg /L using DPPH, EC50 of 20 mg /L using ABTS). An agar-well diffusion assay was used to assess the activity of honeys against seven bacteria strains. All prepared spreads honey samples showed highest antibacterial activity against all bacterial strains tested (diameter of ZI > 20mm). Hence, we note that our new spread proved by excellence to be a functional food due to the high content of phenols and the important antibacterial and antioxidant activities.