Comparative study of the effects of antioxidants on furan formation during thermal processing in model systems

- Not all of the antioxidants tested showed mitigating effects on furan formation.
- The effects of antioxidants were not correlated with their antioxidant activity.
- The kinetics of furan formation was described by power function models.

Furan, a possible carcinogen, is commonly produced by thermal processing in a number of heated foods. In this study, the effects of several natural and synthetic antioxidants on thermally induced furan formation in ascorbic acid, linoleic and linolenic acid model systems were investigated, and results demonstrated that not all of the antioxidants tested showed mitigating effects on furan formation. For the ascorbic acid model system, chlorogenic acid was found to be the most efficient antioxidant in suppressing furan formation. For the linoleic and linolenic acid model systems, the most significant reduction (92% in the former and 80% in the latter) was observed in the case of model systems with butylated hydroxytoluene. In addition, the effects of antioxidants on the kinetics of furan formation were investigated by adding chlorogenic acid into the ascorbic acid model system and sesamol into both linoleic and linolenic acid model system, and the results showed that the mitigating effects of antioxidants might decline with increasing heating time. To describe the kinetics of furan formation from these model systems, power function models were established by non-linear regression and the results indicated that the proposed models could successfully fit the experimental data (R2 > 0.988).