BIOACTIVE COMPOUNDS IN INFANT FORMULA TREATED BY OHMIC HEATING: ANTIOXIDANT, ANTIHYPERGLYCEMIC, AND ANTIHYPERTENSIVE ACTIVITIES

Emerging technologies, such as Ohmic Heating (OH) can be interesting in infant formula processing due to the uniform treatment, which can enhance the bioactive compounds. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of ohmic heating processing (50, 55, 60 and 65 ºC, at 30 V during 45, 40, 12 and 5 min, respectively, electric field strength of 6 V/cm) compared to Conventional processing (PAST) (50, 55, 60 and 65 ºC, during 45, 40, 12 and 5 min, respectively), in increasing the bioactive compounds in the infant formula by the breakdown of its bioactive peptides. Antioxidant (Phenolic Compounds and DPPH), antihyperglycemic (α-amylase and α-glycosidase inhibition), and antihypertensive (Angiotensin-Converting-Enzyme inhibition) activities analysis were performed. The ACE-inhibitors present in the infant formula are attributed to different fragments of casein or whey proteins, called casokinins or lactokinins, respectively. With the exception of the alpha-amylase inhibition analysis (43.15 ± 0.08 to 43.86 ± 0.75 %, for PAST at 50 ºC and for OH at 55 ºC, respectively), a significant difference was observed between the OH and the conventional processing for all bioactive compounds (p <0.05). Overall, OH presented higher preservation of bioactive compounds compared to conventional processing (p<0.05), which was demonstrated with DPPH (9.74 ± 0.07, 9.74 ± 0.03 and 9.61 ± 0.03 µM Trolox Eq/g, at 55, 60 and 65 ºC, respectively), TPC (Total Phenolic Compounds) (88.31 ± 1.47, 86.43 ± 0.27, 87.58 ± 0.52 and 85.56 ± 0.38 µg Gallic Acid Eq/g, at 50, 55, 60 and 65 ºC, respectively) and ACE (Angiotensin-Converting-Enzyme inhibition) (35.00 ± 0.26, 38.27 ± 0.21 and 38.87 ± 0.21 % at 55, 60 and 65 ºC, respectively) trials, except for samples treated at 50 ºC (9.29 ± 0.01 µM Trolox Eq/g and 23.37 ± 0.47 %, for DPPH and ACE, respectively, p>0.05). As for the alpha-glucosidase level, regardless of the technologies performed, 65 °C (44.02 ± 2.30 and 46.25 ± 1.65 %, for OH and PAST, respectively) presented the best values for this trial. Overall, OH proved to be an interesting technology for the processing of infant formulas in relation to the maintenance of bioactive compounds, especially at 60 °C.