Antioxidant Behavior Affected by Polarity in the Olive Oil: Experimental and Molecular Simulation Investigations

Jie Tang; Guohua You; Lu Ruan; Yi Lu; Bianying Wen; Sizhu Wu

doi:10.1021/acsomega.1c00120

Antioxidant Behavior Affected by Polarity in the Olive Oil: Experimental and Molecular Simulation Investigations

ACS Omega. 2021 Mar 4;6(10):7119-7126. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.1c00120. eCollection 2021 Mar 16.

Authors

Jie Tang¹, Guohua You², Lu Ruan¹, Yi Lu¹, Bianying Wen³, Sizhu Wu¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Organic-Inorganic Composites, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, PR China.
² College of Information Science & Technology, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, PR China.
³ Beijing Key Laboratory of Quality Evaluation Technology for Hygiene and Safety of Plastics, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing 100048, PR China.

Abstract

Natural antioxidants are essential potential sources for protecting the oxidation of food oils. However, until now, the mechanisms are still not very clear, especially from the quantitatively theoretical level to analyze the antioxidant behavior. In this work, the micromechanisms of the antioxidant behavior affected by polarity in the olive oil were systematically investigated by experimental and computational methods. The results showed that the polarity of antioxidants decreased with the growth of the alkyl chains, which had multiple impacts on the effectiveness of antioxidants. The excessive polarity gap between the antioxidant and oil molecules would cause the antioxidant to be dispersed at the oil-air interface, which could enhance their antioxidant ability. Meanwhile, the antioxidants with longer alkyl chains had lower polarity and better dispersibility but decreased mobility. Hence, compared with other antioxidants, medium polarity antioxidants presented both good dispersion and relatively suitable migration, indicating that they would have an optimal antioxidant effect.