Inside food supplements: phytochemistry of a fruit blend

There is continuously accruing evidence to suggest the health benefits of consuming fruits and vegetables. Food supplements may represent an effective and acceptable method to deliver a way of providing bioactive compounds to consumers. At the same time, food supplements are often a mixture of different plant extracts, giving raise to a complex combination of different plant secondary metabolites that may be difficult to monitor properly.  The aim our latest paper was to characterize the (poly)phenolic composition of three plant-based food supplements designed to integrate and increase the daily intake of dietary phenolics. The supplements are blends of berries, fruits, or vegetables made from a total of 36 different edible food plants. The best conditions for phenolic extraction were assessed and the total phenolic content of each supplement was estimated (it ranged from 50 to 176 mg/g powder). The analysis of the three supplements by uHPLC–MSn allowed to tentatively identify in all 119 (poly)phenolic compounds belonging to different classes, namely ellagitannins, gallotannins, dihydrochalcones, flavan-3-ols including proanthocyanidins, flavanones, flavones, flavonols, anthocyanins, hydroxybenzoic acids, hydroxycinnamic acids, phenylethanoids, and lignans. The phytochemical analysis of these three plant-based food supplements revealed that their content in (poly)phenolic compounds is substantial. The variety of plant ingredients declared on label is clearly confirmed by the presence of such a huge amount of different and sometimes very specific phenolic structures. Moreover, the preparation of these capsules appears to preserve these components from degradation, keeping them robustly in the forms they are present in plants.

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