Summary of "Antioxidant Capacity and Phenolic Content of Cocoa Beans"

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the antioxidant capacity of cocoa beans from different countries of origin to determine the correlation between antioxidant capacity and phenolic compound. According to the article's background information, a study has already been conducted that concludes that the phenolic content in cocoa liquor varied depending upon the country of origin. Prior to this research, there has been no report published on the antioxidant capacity of cocoa beans from differernt countries.

Cocoa beans from four countries, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Sulawesi, and Malaysia were chosen as test subjects. The antioxidant capaity of coca beans was measured by three different assays, beta-Carotene-linoleate bleaching assay, DPPH radical scavenging assay, and FRAP assay. Each assay is described in my earlier post.

In this study, two extraction mediums were used for preparing the cocoa extracts; water and ethanol. The antioxidant activity and the yield of phenolic content were influenced by the different extracting solvents, and from the previous studies, authors concluded that it is best to use water and ehanol as extraction mediums.

From the data, we could observe that there is no consistent particular order in the antioxidant activity of cocoa beans of these four countries. This paper concluded that cocoa beans from different countries are comparable to each other. Also, the study concluded that phenolic compounds prsent in cocoa extracts have strong scavenging ability and ferric reducing powers rather than beta-carotene-bleaching activity.