The Development Of Health Food Based On Health Function Research Of Theanine

Theanine is a kind of special amino acids in the tea.It has a lot of health functions, but at present the domestic food and drug industry know very a little about it . In order to develop theanin-contained health food, the effect of sleep improvement, immuno-enhancement and anti-fatigue of theanine were studied. Based on the market investigation on tea health foods in China, the prescription and process technology of theanin-contained health tablets were developed. The main research results are as follows:1. After statistic and analysis the registration of tea health food approved by the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA)from 2003-2007 showed that: total 168 tea health foods were registered by SFDA from 2003 to 2007, accounted for 4.4% of the total health foods. They were mainly from the territories of Beijing city, Shanghai city and Guangdong provinces and so on. Most of them were mixing formula. The forms of drugs were capsule, tea and slice. Other types were less. The distributions of health functions were wide, involving in 21 different functions. Most products were registered that they could assist reducing blood-lipid and losing weight which took up 43.5%. The Second was registered by " immuno-enhancement " and "anti-fatigue ". But the products with the function of " sleep improvement "and " alleviate eye fatigue "are less. In those products, 53% of the products used tea extract as the functional ingredient, while 47% used tea. Health foods of TP accounted for 35.7%, while the health foods of tea polysaccharide and theanine are only 1.2. The effect of theanine on sleep improvement was evaluated after feeding the mice with theanine 30 days with the does of 0,50,100,200mg/kg/d.Results showed that theanine could effectively improve sleep function of mice,and the middle does(100mg/kg/d) treatment obtained the best evaluation effect. Theanine could not hypnotize directly,but could prolong the sleep time induced by pentobarbital sodium (sleep time of middle does reached 40.3±26.0min),improve the sleep rate of mice which hypnotized by barbital sodium in the threshold dosage (sleep rate of middle does reached 33.3%),and theanine could decreased significantly the sleep incubation period induced by barbital sodium( sleep incubation period of middle does reached 30.32±4.8min) .3. The effect of theanine on immuno-enhancement was evaluated.Results showed that theanine has no effection on rats immune organ, but it could effectively enhance the clearance ability of mice(mean value of phagocytic index in middle group reached 5.11±1.49), and the difference was extremely significant; theanine could effectively increase the DTH of mice in DNFB induced delayed-type hypersensitivity test with all the does groups being higher than the model does and especially the high group increased significantly(ear edem was 17.12±5.78mg). At the same time theanine can prolong the swimming time of mice,the result proved that theanine has the effection of anti-fatigue.4. The main materials of the theanine composite tablets are theanine and Traditional Chinese medicine extracts, A, B and C. By manual wet granulation experiment, 40% microcrystalline cellulose, and 1% Magnesium stearate were determined as the accessories. Through the pilot-sacle prtrial, 0.5g / tablet of theanine health food was developed.5. The maximal tolerance dose (MTD) of the theanine composite tablet is more than 20.0g/kg (non-toxic). The tablet contains 5.1% theanine and 5.0% crude polysaccharide.