Stilbenes: A new strategy for protecting light-sensitive foods, a review of their structure classification and singlet oxygen quenching mechanism

Abstract

Natural stilbenes have been studied extensively as a result of their complicated structures and diverse biological activities. Singlet oxygen (¹O₂), a kind of reactive oxygen species (ROS) has a strong destructive effect on food systems (especially for light-sensitive foods). Many cutting-edge scientific studies have found that some stilbenes not only have extensive quenching properties for ROS, but also can selectively quench ¹O₂. However, the industry devoted too much energy on the development of more new stilbenes, lacking in-depth summaries and reflections on the characteristics of their basic structure and the mechanism of their extraordinary ¹O₂ quenching abilities. Therefore, we summarized the classification methods for stilbene compounds and evaluated similarities, differences and possible limitations of different classification methods. In addition, we described the role of different functional groups in stilbenes in quenching of ¹O₂ and summarized the quenching mechanism of ¹O₂ by stilbenes. By the way, the current application of stilbene compounds and their potential risks in the food industry were also mentioned in this article. The stilbenes can be used as antioxidants (especially new strategies against ¹O₂ oxidation) in food systems to improve the shelf life. At this stage, it is necessary to develop more effective and safe food antioxidant stilbenes based on their quenching mechanism.

Keywords:

• Classification methods
• 1O2 quenching mechanisms
• photosensitive food
• singlet oxygen
• stilbene compounds

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by national natural sciences foundation of China (grant numbers: 21362028, 31972119, 31671904 and 31460411); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant numbers GK20206001, 2018CSLY020); Agricultural science and technology innovation and research (grant numbers 2021NY-148, 2016NY-184, 2016NY-194); One Hundred Person Project of Shaanxi Province and Oversea Scholarship Program of Shaanxi Normal University (SXBR9197); Sci-Tech Innovation Team of Shaanxi Province, China (2022TD-13); Shaanxi Normal University Graduate Student Innovation Team Project (TD2020042Y); Science and technology leading team of central university projects (GK202202005); the Fundamental Research Founds for the Central Universities (GK202207010); Xianyang City key research and development plan (S2021ZDYF-NY-0633).