Antioxidants saffron

Some colors are nutrients in their own right, and they have antioxidant properties that are beneficial to health. Beta-carotene, annatto, saffron, and turmeric all have these good properties in addition to their color. In fact, the same chemistry that makes them absorb light also helps them to absorb and neutralize dangerous oxygen free radicals in the body. 

Annatto provides color in cheese, butter, margarine, and microwave popcorn. It is often used as a substitute for the expensive herb saffron. It also has antioxidant properties. 

Saffron is a spice that is used sometimes for flavor, but mostly for the yellow color it imparts to foods. Because of its expense, saffron is often replaced in recipes by another carotenoid, annatto, or the unrelated dye molecule in turmeric. Like the other carotenoid dyes, saffron is an antioxidant, but its expense makes it unsuitable as a preservative or dietary supplement. 

Another group of methods relies on the destruction of an indicator by an oxidant, leading to a decrease of its characteristic absorbance or fluorescence. Usually this decrease is not linear with time, so the method of choice for the analysis of data is the either the lag time measurement or the area-under-curve approach, that is, comparing the areas under curves of absorbance or fluorescence versus time for a reference sample and a sample studied. Antioxidants protecting the oxidizable substrate increase the area under the kinetic curve (Fig. 4). An absorptiometric method used the bleaching of the carotenoid crocin induced by ABAP (L23, T7). However, crocin is rather expensive and the recommended method of its preparation (by extraction of saffron) may lead to extracts of different composition and properties varying from batch to batch. 

Crocus sativus (Saffron, Safranal). Saffron (Crocus sativus) and its active metabolite safranal display neuropharmacological effects with anxiolytic, anticonvulsant, and neuroprotective activity. Safranal decreases quinolinic acid-induced lipid peroxidation and oxidative DNA damage, and prevents the decrease of hippocampal thiol redox and antioxidant status produced by quinolinic acid [242],... 

Crocin is a carotenoid from the stigma of the saffron flower with many medicinal properties, including antioxidant effects. Crocin has the ability to prevent amyloid formation. The antiamy-loidogenic effect of crocin may be exerted not only by the inhibition of Ap amyloid formation but also by the disruption of amyloid aggregate [384],... 

Spices have been also considered to be nutraceuticals. Curry powder, a commercial spice blend from India used nowadays worldwide, includes mr-meric, obtained from Curcuma longa. Beneficial effects of turmeric, known in Europe as Indian saffron since medieval times, have been associated to one of its components, curcumin with antihypertensive, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and cancer preventive activities [33-35]. 

Saffron (Crocus sativus) blossom with crimson stigmas. Crocin is a potent antioxidant. It has anticarcinogenic, antidepressant and aphrodisiac properties (at least according to an Iranian study in normal male rats). [42]... 

Saffron extracts and their crocin compounds inhibit amyloid-beta protein deposition and improve learning and memory functions in mice which suggests a possible benefit in the management of Alzheimer s disease and other memory impairment conditions.This effect may be attributed to the antioxidant/ free radical scavenging activity frequently reported for saffron and its major constitu-... 

K. R. CadwaUader, H. H. Baek, and M. Cai, Characterization of saffron flavor by aroma extract dilution analysis in Spices Flavor Chemistry and Antioxidant Properties (S. J. Risch and C.-T. Ho, eds.), ACS Symposium Series 660, American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, 1997, p. 66. 

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