Antioxidants are substances in food that include many natural components that are beneficial to ones health.  Natural and synthetic antioxidants are also useful in keeping foods fresh.

Measurement of the total antioxidant capacity of foods can thus provide important information about the comparative health benefits of foods and beverages as well as the shelf life of foods and their freshness.

Several factors influence the stability of foods and ingredients, including added and natural antioxidants, temperature, handling conditions and exposure to light and oxygen.  Properties associated with this decline in freshness include undesirable changes in flavors, textures, shelf stability, nutritional content and appearance.

While there are numerous methods available to measure antioxidants few are useful in food chemistry. For more information on the pros and cons of antioxidant detection methods, see our White Paper. The patented CUPRAC method detects a wider range of antioxidants and offers a number of advantages over older methods:

• It reacts to a much broader range of thiol antioxidants than the FRAP method.
• It is selective due to its lower redox potential than that of the ferric method. Simple sugars and citric acid are not oxidized in this method.
• It is much more stable than the chromogenic radical reagents such as ABTS and DPPH.
• It is insensitive to humidity, light, air, and pH.
• The calibration curve is linear over a wide concentration range unlike other methods.