Edible Flowers—A New Promising Source of Mineral Elements in Human Nutrition

Molecules

Otakar Rop¹  Jiri Mlcek¹  Tunde Jurikova¹  Jarmila Neugebauerova¹ 

[1]¹Department of Food Technology and Microbiology, Faculty of Technology, Tomas Bata University in Zlin, Namesti T. G. Masaryka 275, CZ-762 72 Zlin, Czech Republic

关键词: edible flowers;    antioxidants;    phenolics;    flavonoids;    mineral elements;   

DOI  :  10.3390/molecules17066672

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

On a global scale, people are demanding more attractive and tasty food. Both the quality of foodstuffs and aesthetic aspects contribute to the appearance of consumed meals. The attraction and appeal of individual dishes could be enhanced by edible flowers. New information concerning the composition and nutritional value of edible flowers is also important and represents a sufficient reason for their consumption. The aim of this study is to contribute to the popularization of some selected edible flowers of ornamental plants involving altogether 12 species. The flowers were used to determine their antioxidant capacity, which fluctuated between 4.21 and 6.96 g of ascorbic acid equivalents (AAE)/kg of fresh mass (FM). Correlation coefficients between antioxidant capacity and the contents of total phenolics and flavonoids were r² = 0.9705 and r² = 0.7861, respectively. Moreover, the results were supplemented with new data about the mineral composition of edible flowers (mostly, not found in the available literature). The highest levels of mineral elements were observed in the flowers of species Chrysanthemum, Dianthus or Viola. The most abundant element was potassium, the content of which ranged from 1,842.61 to 3,964.84 mg/kg of FM.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.