The antioxidant activity of amino acids in two vegetable oils

Of 27 amino acids studied, most had some antioxidant activity when added in aqueous solution to either safflower oil or a mixture of sunflower and cottonseed oil (active oxygen and storage methods). Cysteine-HCl, glutamic acid-HCl (in the mixture), and glutamic acid-HCl (in safflower oil) behaved as prooxidants. When added as a solid, most amino acids were ineffective. The protection factors of these amino acids were less than 1.3 in safflower oil with methionine, proline, lysine and cysteine providing the highest activ-ity. In the oil mixture (which had a higher metal content) lysine, arginine, glutamic acid, methionine, and hydroxyproline were anti-oxidant with protection factors of up to 1.85. Chelation of metals by amino acids was presumably responsible for the antioxidant activity. The increase in cysteine concentration up to 1% has more than doubled the protection factor in Bint oil (compared with the 0.01% level), whereas with some other amino acids the increase was either small or slight.