The Health Function Of Duanwu Herbal Tea And A New Functional Beverage Development

With the development of modern society, the living standards have been much more improved nowadays. However, people have also been suffering all kinds of threatens from different circumstances, such as polluted environment, enormous pressure, which directly affect the health of people negatively. Therefore, the theme about how to keep good health has attracted much attention from every field. As a traditional health drink with reducing internal heat and detoxification, herbal tea has been widely consumed in southern China. While the concept of healthcare and the market of beverage have been expanded, new type of compound health herbal tea has been developed from traditional type of herbal tea and taking over the beverage market, with wide population and influence in China. Many researches have already reported that the traditional Chinese medicine, ingredients of the herbal tea, is the main source of natural antioxidant reagent. Nevertheless, there is not enough scientific explanation and rigorous provement about the reasons why herbal tea can reduce internal heat and detoxificate. This research picked out the represent of the new compound health herbal tea, namely the Duanwu herbal tea, and its main ingredients, including ageratum, mulberry leaves, dried orangepeel, dandelion, chrysanthemum, honeysuckle, houttuynia and lophatherum, as the objects of study. This study is to comprehensively and thoroughly analyze the antioxidant capacities and antimicrobial activities of different extracts from Duanwu hearbal tea and its ingredients, and discuss the influence of extracting methods, infusing and decocting, on the efficacy of Duanwu herbal tea and its ingredients, upon which develop the new type of compound health tea. The main study contents and results are as follows:1. The results of the antioxidant capacities of different extracts from Duanwu herbal tea and its ingredients by DPPH method, ABTS method, HRSA method, FRAP method are as follows:the antioxidant capacities of Duanwu herbal tea are stronger than its main ingredients. Meanwhile, the antioxidant capacities of infusions from Duanwu herbal tea and its ingredients are commonly stronger than decoctions. 2. The results of total phenolics of different extracts from Duanwu herbal tea and its ingredients by Folin-Ciocalteu method are as follows:under the condition of infusion, the total phenolics of Duanwu herbal tea are110μg GAE/gdw, while others’ are48-334μg GAE/gdw; under the condition of decoction, the total phenolics of Duanwu herbal tea are101μg GAE/gdw, while others’ are21～366μg GAE/gdw.3. The results of comprehensive antioxidant capacities of different extracts from Duanwu herbal tea and its ingredients by fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method are as follows:under the condition of infusion, the highest comprehensive antioxidant capacities are dandelion>Duanwu herbal tea>honeysuckle>dried orangepeel> houttuynia> ageratum> chrysanthemum> mulberry leaves> lophatherum; while under the condition of decoction, the highest comprehensive antioxidant capacities are honeysuckle> dandelion>Duanwu herbal tea> chrysanthemum> houttuynia> ageratum> mulberry leaves> dried orangepeel> lophatherum.4. The results of the antimicrobial activities of different extracts from Duanwu herbal tea and its ingredients on Escherichia coli.are as follows:under the condition of infusion, the MIC of Duanwu herbal tea, dried orangepeel, dandelion, chrysanthemum, honeysuckle and houttuynia is lOg/L, and the MIC of ageratum, mulberry leaves and lophatherum is40g/L; under the condition of decoction, the MIC of dandelion, chrysanthemum and honeysuckle is10g/L, the MIC of Duanwu herbal tea, dried orangepeel and houttuynia is20g/L and the MIC of ageratum, mulberry leaves and lophatherum is40g/L.5. The results of L34orthogonal test of honeysuckle, green tea, chrysanthemum, dried orangepeel and dandelion, which is to develop the new type of compound health tea, are as follows:the best proportion of ingredients is A3B1C1D1.