Chinese Dates

A Traditional Functional Food

Dongheng Liu, Xingqian Ye, Yueming Jiang

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781498703581
• eBook ISBN: 9781138032101
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Nutrition, Dietics & Bariatrics

Chinese Dates: A Traditional Functional Food delivers unique information on Chinese dates (jujubes) as typical ethical foods and traditional health-promoting foods. It conveys a better understanding of Asian food cultures and provides historical information in regard to traditional functional foods and their dietary applications. It discusses the h

Section II

Chemical and Biochemical Properties, and Health Benefits of Chinese Dates (Jujubes)

3

Bioactive Compounds from Ziziphus jujuba and Allied Species

Mendel Friedman

CONTENTS

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Bioactive Jujube Fruit, Seed, Leaf, and Bark Compounds

3.2.1 Amino Acids and Dietary Protein

3.2.2 Cyclopeptide Alkaloids

3.2.3 Fatty Acids

3.2.4 Indoleacetic Acid Derivatives

3.2.5 Nucleosides, Nucleotides, and Nucleobases

3.2.6 Phenolic Compounds and Flavonoids

3.2.7 Polysaccharides

3.2.8 Saponins

3.2.9 Tannins

3.2.10 Toxins

3.2.11 Triterpenic Acid

3.2.12 Volatile Compounds

3.3 Effect of Preharvest Factors on Composition

3.3.1 Soil Composition

3.3.2 Water Irrigation

3.3.3 Ripening Stage

3.3.4 Variability among Cultivars

3.3.5 Jujube Genome

3.4 Effect of Postharvest Treatments on Jujube Fruit Composition

3.5 Conclusion

Acknowledgment

References

3.1 Introduction

The jujube fruit is widely cultivated from China to southwest Europe, India, and the Middle East. Fresh, processed, and dried jujube fruit is used as a food, mostly in fresh form or as dried dates, and confectionary recipes. For example, Tunisian people have been using different parts of the Ziziphus jujuba plant, including leaves, pulp, and seeds (Elaloui et al. 2015), to prepare jujube teas. In the United States, jujube products are available in health food stores. In addition to its value as a nutritional food (Nyanga et al. 2013), jujubes have been used in many traditional medicines and have been shown to exhibit numerous health-promoting effects. Jujubes may therefore be considered as a so-called functional food, having nutritional as well as medicinal uses.

Jujube fruit and seed extracts and pure compounds are reported to exhibit numerous beneficial, health-promoting effects; most studies to date, however, have been in rodents and cells. These reported beneficial properties include antiadipogenic (Kubota et al. 2009), antidiabetic (Michel et al. 2011), antiepileptic (Pahuja et al. 2011), anti-inflammatory (Yu et al. 2012), antimicrobial (Daneshmand et al. 2013a, b), antifungal (Ansari et al. 2013), antioxidant (Brito et al. 2015; Li et al. 2014), antitermite (Ahmad et al. 2011), antiviral (Yen et al. 2014), antitumor and antipain (Kaleem et al. 2013), antinephrotoxic (Awad et al. 2014), antitumor (Choi et al. 2012; Plastina et al. 2012; Xu et al. 2014), anticholinesterase (Zare-Zardini et al. 2013), neuroprotective (Yoo et al. 2010), sedative (San et al. 2013; Dey and Dey 2013), and improved learning (Zhang et al. 2014b) effects.

The extensive range of these and possibly other health-promoting effects stimulated worldwide interest in isolating and characterizing the structures of pure organic compounds in jujube fruit and seeds that may be responsible for the beneficial bioactivities. The major objective of this chemistry-oriented chapter is to outline the various categories of jujube compounds that may be responsible for the observed bioactivities of jujube products (the compounds are described in alphabetical order). The possible impacts of preharvest and postharvest factors that may influence the jujube composition are also mentioned. Figures 3.1, 3.4 illustrate the characterized structures of several classes of bioactive jujube compounds.

3.2 Bioactive Jujube Fruit, Seed, Leaf, and Bark Compounds

The bioactive compounds synthesized by different parts of the jujube plant including fruit, seeds, leaves, and bark do not seem, with some exceptions, to be different. Beneficial health-promoting effects following consumption of different plant parts would also be expected to differ. To better understand the complexity of overlapping jujube bioactivities, here we briefly outline in alphabetical order the different categories of nutritional and bioactive compounds.

3.2.1 Amino Acids and Dietary Protein

Free amino acids in plant foods exert a dual role in the diet. They represent a source of nitrogen and of nutritionally essential amino acids such as Lys, Met, and Thr. They can also participate in reactions to form desirable and undesirable browning products. One browning product, acrylamide, formed from free Asn and glucose during food processing is potentially toxic. One way to mitigate the formation of acrylamide during processing of plant foods is to reduce the biosynthesis of asparagine. The total and the relative amount of free Asn affects the amount of acrylamide formed. The reducing amino acid Cys can lower formation of acrylamide (Rayburn and Friedman 2010).

We previously described the distribution of free amino acids in three Korean jujube fruits and two jujube seeds listed in the order of elution positions (Choi et al. 2011, 2012). In g/100 g dry weight, total free amino acid content measured by ion-exchange chromatography ranged from 5.2 to 9...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Preface
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Editors
• Contributors
• Section I Origin, Distribution, and Growing Conditions of Chinese Dates (Jujubes)
• Section II Chemical and Biochemical Properties, and Health Benefits of Chinese Dates (Jujubes)
• Section III Chinese Dates (Jujubes) Products and Postharvest Technology
• Section IV Chinese Dates (Jujubes) Industry in Different Countries
• Index