Antioxidant properties of custard pudding dessert containing rare hexose, d-psicose

Custard pudding (CP) is a sweet dessert composed of nutritionally valuable egg, milk and sucrose. In the present study, d-psicose (Psi), a noncalorie rare hexose, was added into raw materials of custard pudding as a substitute for sucrose in order to develop a new functional dessert. The antioxidant activities of cooked CP products were evaluated by different methods, including the analysis of the scavenging activities on ABTS+ and DPPH radicals, and ferric-reducing antioxidant power. The results showed that ethanolic extract from Psi-CP possessed the remarkable radical scavenging capacity and reducing power as compared to the extracts from CP products including alimentary sugars (sucrose and d-fructose). The quantitative evaluation of antioxidant activity based on Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC) was performed to compare Psi-CP with commercial pudding products. Among all tested pudding products, Psi-CP had the highest antioxidant activity. These data suggested that Psi-CP contained a considerable amount of antioxidant substances formed through Maillard reaction in food processing. Thus CP including the rare sugar was found to be an effective functional dessert for the prevention of some diseases associated with oxidative stress.