Research Progress of Cellular Antioxidant Activity Assay for Antioxidant Evaluation of Foods

It is well known that increasing cardiovascular diseases and cancers were caused by excessive free radicals in vivo.Scavenging of excessive free radicals by antioxidants is one of the effective methods to reduce such diseases.Numerous studies have demonstrated that phytochemicals from fruits,vegetables and whole grains,possess strong antioxidant activity.Therefore,studies on antioxidant effects in vivo or antioxidant activity evaluation of these substances have become a hot topic in the field of functional foods.Cellular antioxidant activity(CAA) assay has been established and widely applied in antioxidant evaluation of functional foods,which can effectively predict the antioxidant activity of phytochemicals in biological system.In this paper,the current research progress of CAA in China and other countries and its application in antioxidant evaluation of functional foods are reviewed in this paper.