Frontiers in Nutrition (Aug 2022)

Enhancing organic selenium content and antioxidant activities of soy sauce using nano-selenium during soybean soaking

  • Jingru Chen,
  • Tuo Feng,
  • Bo Wang,
  • Ronghai He,
  • Yanling Xu,
  • Peipei Gao,
  • Zhi-Hong Zhang,
  • Lei Zhang,
  • Jiangyan Fu,
  • Zhan Liu,
  • Xianli Gao

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.970206
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9

Abstract

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Nano-selenium has a greater potential than inorganic selenium in preventing selenium-deficiency diseases due to its higher safety. In this study, spherical nano-selenium particles (53.8 nm) were prepared using sodium selenite, ascorbic acid and chitosan. Selenium-enriched soy sauces were prepared by soaking soybean in nano-selenium and sodium selenite solutions (2–10 mg/L), respectively. Total selenium and organic selenium contents of soy sauces prepared by nano-selenium and sodium selenite were increased by 32–191-fold and 29–173-fold compared to the control (without selenium), and organic selenium accounted for over 90% of total selenium. Soy sauce prepared using 6 mg/L nano-selenium had the strongest antioxidant activities, which were 9.25–28.02% higher than the control. Nano-selenium (6 mg/L) markedly enhanced the koji's enzyme activities (9.76–33.59%), then the latter promoted the release of total phenolics (27.54%), total flavonoids (27.27%) and the formation of free amino acids (16.19%), Maillard reaction products (24.50%), finally the antioxidant activities of selenium-enriched soy sauce were enhanced.

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