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How Honey Acts as an Antioxidant?

Ahmed Moussa, Aissat Saad and Djebli Noureddine

Although it is widely accepted that honey is beneficial to health, thanks to its antioxidant properties among all of its beneficial aspects. Explanation(s) remain obscure, and the mechanism by which it acts also so far remains to be elucidated. The antioxidant activity of honey has been extensively studied, but there are remarkable discrepancies in the published data. The main cause and far from being negligible is that honey is a very complex mixture containing a number of ingredients involved in “oxidant/antioxidant” physiological processes (hydrogen peroxide, nitrite, nitrate, glucose, glucose oxidase, iron, copper, chlorine, iodine, catalase, tyrosine, tryptophane, arginine, flavonoides, phenolics acids, Maillard reaction products, its pH is not stable, etc…). Till recent days, there was no standardized method to assess this property.