Anais do Simpósio Latino Americano de Ciências de Alimentos
Anais do 14 SLACA - Simpósio Latino Americano de Ciência de Alimentos

An adequate intake of nutrients is essential for good health maintenance, and vegetables are reported to consist of natural sources of nutrients and non-nutrient compounds with health benefits. Purple carrot (Daucus carota L.), orange bell pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) and yellow beetroot (Beta vulgaris L.) are still little known and cultivated in Brazil, however they show great potentials for cultivation and industrial application due to their natural bioactive substances. The aim of this work was to assess total phenolic and β-carotene contents of the aforementioned vegetables before and after in vitro gastrointestinal digestion. Samples were acquired from an organic farmer in Iracemápolis city, SP, Brazil. Firstly, the crude, water cooked vegetables, and also their respective cooking water, were investigated for total phenolic content (TPC) determined by the reduction of Folin-Ciocalteu’s reagent. β-carotene was extracted from the samples with acetone and partitioned with petroleum ether. For HPLC-DAD analysis of β-carotene, the dry extracts were resuspended in ethanol:ethyl acetate. Afterwards, all the samples were digested and evaluated for the same responses. In general, TPC of all the samples improved after in vitro digestion, except for purple carrot cooking water. However, TPC in this sample was the highest before digestion. For crude vegetables, purple carrot showed the highest content of β-carotene (50.34 ug.g-1), followed by the bell pepper and beetroot (40.81 and 0.47 ug.g-1, respectively). Nevertheless, bell pepper showed the highest amount after cooking, being almost 1.5 and 139 times higher than cooked purple carrot and yellow beetroot, respectively. For cooking water, β-carotene was only detected for purple carrot. As conclusions, we observed that cooking may increase or decrease TPC depending on the vegetables matrice, and that digestion increased the phenolic content in general. Purple carrot and bell pepper are highlighted as sources of the carotenoid.