Author(s)

Verona Borges Ferreira, Thadia Turon Costa da Silva^*, Silvia Regina Magalhães Couto, Armando Ubirajara Oliveira Sabaa Srur

Centro de Ciências da Saúde, Instituto de Nutrição Josué de Castro, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.

Organic olericulture differs from conventional agriculture due to the absence of pesticide, synthetic fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, some food additives and ionizing radiation, producing vegetables with a different chemical composition and with different amounts of bioactive compounds. The objective of this study was to quantify, in organic vegetables consumed in Brazil, the amount of total phenolic compounds using Folin-Ciocalteu reagent and the antioxidant activity through DPPH method. Among the analyzed vegetables, the effectiveness in the antioxidant capacity was obtained in decreasing order, by the broccoli (69.35), kale (63.20), cabbage (35.72) and carrot (20.39), expressed in % of DPPH consumption after 30 minutes of reaction. The amount of total phenolic compounds (mg GAE/ml of fluid extract-FE) present in the kale (0.606), broccoli (0.511), cabbage (0.214) and carrots (0.124) demonstrates a positive correlation between phenolic amounts and the antioxidant activity of the vegetables analyzed.

Organic Food, Bioactive Compounds, Vegetables, Antioxidant, DPPH

Ferreira, V. , da Silva, T. , Couto, S. and Srur, A. (2015) Total Phenolic Compounds and Antioxidant Activity of Organic Vegetables Consumed in Brazil. Food and Nutrition Sciences, 6, 798-804. doi: 10.4236/fns.2015.69083.