Abstract
Hen breed, diet enrichment, cooking methods, and gastrointestinal (GI) digestion modulates the bioaccessibility of the bioactive compounds in eggs, but their synergistic role in modulating bioactivity is still unclear. The present study evaluates the effect of hen breed, diet enrichment, and GI digestion on the cooked whole egg-derived peptides in-vitro antioxidant and antihypertensive activities. Standard and enriched whole eggs from White Leghorn (WLH) and Rhode Island Red (RIR) hens were boiled or fried and subjected to GI digestion. Antioxidant activity was measured through oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) and gastrointestinal epithelial cell-based assays, and the antihypertensive capacity by in-vitro Angiotensin-I Converting Enzyme (ACE) inhibition assay. WLH fried standard egg hydrolysate showed a high ORAC antioxidant activity but failed to show any significant antioxidant effect in the cell-based assay. No significant differences were observed in the antihypertensive activity, although enriched samples tended to have a higher ACE-inhibitory capacity. The peptide profile explained the antioxidant capacities based on antioxidant structural requirements from different peptide fractions, while previously reported antihypertensive peptides were found in all samples. The study validates the importance of physiologically relevant models and requires future studies to confirm mechanisms that yield bioactive compounds in whole egg hydrolysates.