Moderate antioxidative efficiencies of flavonoids during peroxidation of methyl linoleate in homogeneous and micellar solutions

The relative reactivities as well as the stoichiometric coefficients for a number of flavonoids, catechols, and—for comparison—standard phenolic antioxidants were determined by analyzing the kinetics of oxygen consumption in organic and micellar systems, with peroxidation initiated by lipid- and water-soluble azo initiators. The results demonstrated that the flavonoids did not behave as classic phenolic antioxidants such as α-tocopherol, but showed only moderate chain-breaking activities. The results were in line with other structure-activity relationship studies on the importance of the B-ring catechol structure, the 2,3-double bond, and the 3,5-hydroxy groups. The data are discussed in view of possible explanations of the deviations flavonoids reveal in their behavior compared with regular phenolic antioxidants.