What is Hesperidin?
You may be familiar with flavonoids such as resveratrol in red wine or catechin in green tea, but have you heard about hesperidin? Hesperidin is a plant compound naturally found in the peels of citrus.
Hesperidin may function as an antioxidant. Think of antioxidants as little bodyguards in your body that reduces damages to your cells and tries to protect you from different types of diseases.
DID YOU KNOW?
The flavonoid hesperidin is highly concentrated in citrus and rarely found in other foods, making orange juice a unique source of this flavonoid.
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Get the Highest Amount of Hesperidin From Your Diet by Drinking Florida Orange Juice
Citrus variety, fruit maturity, post-harvest processing techniques, storage conditions, and the location within the fruit (eg. peels are richer than pulp) affect levels of flavonoids in orange juice. Thus, the amount of flavonoids in a food can vary widely. Orange juice has been reported to contain between 30mg1 and 130mg2 of hesperidin on average in an 8-ounce (1 cup / 236ml) serving.
The higher pressures used to squeeze oranges to make 100% orange juice can dramatically increase the amount of hesperidin and other beneficial phytonutrients released from the peels of the orange.3 Furthermore, 100% orange juice has been shown to have higher available amounts of beneficial flavonoids than whole oranges or fresh pressed orange juice.4,5
References
- Bhagwat S, Haytowitz D. USDA Database for the Flavonoid Content of Selected Foods Release 3.2. In. Beltsville, MD: Unites States Department of Agriculture; 2015.Hemila, BMJ Open. 2013;3(6).
- Phenol-Explorer. Database on the Phenol Content of Food. Version 3.6.
- Fisher. J Agric Food Chem. 1978;26(6):1459-60
- Aschoff et al. J Agric Food Chem. 2015;63(2):578-587.
- Bai et al. J Sci Food Agric. 2013;93(11):2771-2781.