2.3. Intake of bioactive compounds from fennel-containing PFS
Bioactive compounds found in fennel were reported using the ePlantLIBRA database (EuroFIR AISBL and PlantLIBRA, 2013). ePlantLIBRA is an extensive database containing biological effects data as well as quality evaluated composition data from peer reviewed publications of bioactive compounds analyzed in botanicals. The bioactive compounds were selected for the analysis based on (1) prior knowledge of the biological effects of the compounds and (2) the number of the analysis results available in the database for each compound. For fennel, 70 analytical results were available for 36 different bioactive compounds, of which 13 were selected for this study.
Information on the content of bioactive components in each botanical was extracted from the ePlantLIBRA database (EuroFIR AISBL and PlantLIBRA, 2013). The data were saved in Excel format. For each bioactive component, all the analysis results were checked, and concentration information from appropriate studies was selected for use in the calculations. In order to provide a representative assessment of exposure, we calculated three separate intake scenarios for each bioactive component: one using the average concentration, one using the maximum and one using the minimum concentration. If a concentration range for the bioactive compound was presented, we used the high end of the range for the maximum scenario, and the low end of the range for the minimum scenario. If a standard deviation was given, we added two standard deviations to calculate the maximum scenario, and subtracted two standard deviations for the minimum scenario. If only the average concentration was given, minimum and maximum scenarios were not calculated. Finally, If the concentration was expressed as ‘less than’ (