4.3. Changes in fruit and juice antioxidants during in vitro
gastrointestinal digestion
The major finding observed from the in vitro simulated human
digestion and absorption protocol applied to the fruit and juice
samples was that the total anthocyanin recovery from the dialyzable fraction (IN) of the fresh mulberry fruit was significantly
higher than in the processed juice (p< 0.05) (Table 4). This higher
anthocyanin bioavailability in fruit sample as compared to the
juice sample may be explained by there being higher amounts of
anthocyanin compounds accessible in fruit than in juice (based
on HPLC quantifications) (Table 3). Furthermore, polyphenols have
been suggested to bind to food matrices during digestion, which
may protect the more labile anthocyanins from degradation
(McDougall, Fyffe, et al., 2005).