Nutrition-based health : cell-based bioassays for food antioxidant activity evaluation

Food science has progressively evolved and now there are wide evidences that foods have biological activities that are beyond their classical nutritional value. In this field, the antioxidant activity of pure compounds, food, feed, and dietary supplements has been extensively studied and numerous analytical approaches and assay models have been developed, involving various systems from simple chemical assays to animal models and human studies. This article is an overview of different cell-based models that have been used for testing the antioxidant properties of food, feed, and dietary supplements. Advantages, drawbacks, and technical problems to develop and validate suitable, robust, and high-throughput cell-based bioassays for screening food antioxidant activity will be discussed.