is one of the main risk factors for cardiovascular and renal
diseases, affects between 8 and 30% of the population in
Latin America (PAHO 2007).
The angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) plays a crucial
role in the regulation of blood pressure by converting
angiotensin I into angiotensin II, a potent vasoconstrictor,
and by simultaneously inactivating bradykinin, a vasodilator
(Simões e Silva and Flynn 2011). Because these regulatory
activities of ACE on increase blood pressure, synthetic
ACE inhibitors are often used in the treatment of arterial
hypertension (Erdmann et al. 2008).
Scientific evidence suggests that increasing protein intake,
particularly plant proteins, can reduce the risk of hypertension
and cardiovascular disease (Erdmann et al. 2008), and
this effect could be caused by bioactive peptides released
from consumed protein. Such small amino acid residue
sequences are inactive as part of their intact proteins, but
they become active when released during digestion or
during in vitro enzymatic hydrolysis (Hartmann and Meisel
2007; Möller et al. 2008).