Potential of commonly consumed green leafy vegetables for their antioxidant capacity and its linkage with the micronutrient profile

Abstract

Green leafy vegetables (GLV) offer a cheap but rich source of a number of micronutrients and other phytochemicals having antioxidant properties. The potential of 30 GLV in the raw and cooked form as natural antioxidant supplements for vegetarian diets was assessed. There was a large variability in the values of antioxidant activity of various GLV extracts in the lipid micelles (1.5–5.6 mM vitamin E/100 g for raw samples and 1.6–3.8 mM vitamin E/100 g for cooked samples). Similar to thiobarbituric acid reactive substances values, the super oxide scavenging ability values also exibited large variation (10.6–55.9), with significantly higher values in the raw state than the cooked state (P<0.001). Omum leaves, radish leaves and lettuce had high values for this index. The range of values for ferrous iron chelating activity was from 9.3 to 65.7 mM EDTA/100 g food material, indicating again a large variability in this assay. Leaves of coriander, amaranthus viridis, colcasia green and drumstick showed high values, while Amaranthus p. Colocasia black and amaranthus red exibited low values. Differences between raw and cooked values were highly significant for all the three indices (P<0.001).