A highly effective natural antioxidant—Rosemary

The main components of rosemary extract are rosmarinol, carnol and carnosic acid. Several main components of rosemary extract have strong antioxidant activity. It has obvious effects on preventing oil oxidation and maintaining meat flavor.

Rosemary is a kind of multi-purpose cash crop, from which can extract antioxidant, rosemary essential oil, etc. The main components of antioxidants are diterpenes, flavonoids, triterpenes and other compounds with antioxidant functions. Rosemary oil is an oily liquid made up of more than 30 volatile components.

Rosemary extract has the characteristics such as high efficiency, safety, widely used in cosmetics, perfume, soap, air freshener insect repellents, medicine, animal fats, animal feed, meat, seafood, flour, seasoning sauce, seasoning, baking food, Fried products, natural pigment, essence, biological pesticides, tobacco, and other fields, especially to treat blood malignant tumor, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and inhibiting HIV infection, treatment of indigestion, prevent alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, high blood uric acid and respiratory system diseases, etc., for the production and life brought a lot of convenience. In Europe, rosemary has a long history as a food spice and has been used in cosmetics, food and medicine. Existing studies have shown that rosemary has obvious effects on preventing oil oxidation and maintaining the flavor of meat. A series of rosemary antioxidant products have been developed in Japan.

At present, rosemary‘s antioxidant function is mainly applied to food antioxidants and preservatives. Rosemary dried leaves have a long history as food spice. Modern studies have shown that the non-volatile components of rosemary have obvious antioxidant effects, and the antioxidant activity of its main active component, carnol, is similar to that of BHA, while the antioxidant activity of rosemary is 5 times higher than that of BHT and BHA. It is a new generation of pure natural antioxidants, completely avoid the toxic side effects of synthetic antioxidants and the weakness of pyrolysis. The toxicology experiment and high temperature frying experiment proved that the product has the characteristics of safety, high efficiency, heat resistance and wide spectrum. Rosemary‘s unique antioxidant function has been widely studied and applied in foreign countries, but its application in China is almost blank.

The United States and Japan are the first countries to study the antioxidant of rosemary. In Japan, 95% acetic acid extract of rosemary is used to make an additive to prevent the essence from deteriorating, and to add carotenoids and other natural food colors to prevent its oxidation and fading. After years of rosemary, Chinese academy of sciences research, not only completed the cultivation experiment, the antioxidant effective components extraction, isolation and structure identification, antioxidant performance experiment, production process and supercritical CO2 extraction technology research, as well as the aroma of rosemary essential oil yield component, etc., the research has made gratifying achievements.

Carnol has been widely used in the food and pharmaceutical industries as an antioxidant and antimicrobial additive. Through long-term and short-term animal model studies, hongc. t. et al. found that rosemary extract and its components have potential inhibitory effects on the biological growth of induced tumors. Roarinic acid has obvious antipyretic, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antithrombotic and fibrin dissolving activities, this product is also expected to be developed as an antithrombotic drug.

Studies at home and abroad have shown that rosemary extract is a highly effective natural antioxidant, and its antioxidant components mainly include carnol, carnosic acid, rosmarinol and rosmarinic acid. Wang hong et al. found that rosemary acid can improve the activity of antioxidant enzymes, scavenge free radicals, reduce the production of lipid peroxidation, and play a role in delaying aging. The results showed that after feeding rosemary extract for 30d, 1mg/mL and 3mg/mL dose groups could significantly improve the antioxidant enzyme activity in drosophila, inhibit the production of lipid peroxides MDA, and effectively delay the aging. Hence infer rosemary extract anti-aging mechanism may be due to the antioxidant components of rosemary extract can improve the body’s antioxidant enzyme activity, remove excess free radicals, maintain the balance of metabolism of free radicals, thereby reducing the free radicals caused by biological membrane lipid peroxidation, protect the body’s normal metabolism.