During recent decades, nutritional research and consumer interests have gradually shifted from addressing nutrition deficiencies to preventing chronic diseases. Dietary bioactive compounds may play a critical role in this area. As a major group of dietary phytochemicals, flavonoids are widely distributed in plant foods and have been shown to exert a wide range of bioactivities. Since 1999, USDA's Nutrient Data Lab (NDL) has developed three separate flavonoid databases (Flavonoids, Isoflavones and Proanthocyanidins), and they have been updated frequently. Originally, each of these databases contained only a limited number of foods, but they were expanded with each release. Quick and accurate analysis of certain flavonoids, such as proanthocyanidins and less common flavonoids, is still challenging for many reasons including limitation of instrumentation and availability of standards. To achieve good results, analytical procedures, from sample preparation to identification and quantification methods, must be carefully examined. NDL has recently constructed a new Expanded Flavonoids Database for approximately 2900 commonly consumed foods, using calculated values from analytical data. This database provides full profiles for 29 predominant dietary flavonoids for every food in the database. Glucosinolates are a group of important sulfur-containing compounds found in cruciferous vegetables. There is growing evidence suggesting that they could be the major cancer chemo-preventive agents in cruciferous vegetables. NDL is working on addressing some challenges in analyzing glucosinolates to develop a dietary glucosinolate database. The results are used to determine the quality of the data in the literature, and to support better experimental design in obtaining analytical data. Initially, a database will be developed from literature and will be rated using NDL's Data Quality Evaluation System. In addition, as many vegetables are consumed cooked, a study was designed to estimate retention factors for bioactive compounds in vegetables for common cooking methods.

New developments in the analyses of bioactive compounds in foods for developing special interest databases

254th National Meeting (2017)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.