Ethanolic extracts of Moringa oleifera Lam.

This paper reports the evaluation of the antioxidant potential of the ethanolic extracts of the leaves (EL), flowers (EF), seed pods (EP) and seeds (ES) from Moringa oleifera Lam. The antioxidant potential was assessed, upon the addition of the extracts to fish oil, by means of the total extractable phenol content (TEP), the DPPH^· free radical scavenging efficiency and using pressurized differential scanning calorimetry (P-DSC). The results of TEP and DPPH^· showed that the ES extract does not present a potential to be used as an antioxidant additive, and it was thus discarded from the remaining analyses. Thus, the following treatments were prepared: pure fish oil, fish oil with BHT (100 mg kg^?1), fish oil with TBHQ (100 mg kg^?1) and fish oil with EL, EF and EP—all at the concentration of 100 mg kg^?1, in relation to the total extractable phenolics contained in each one of the extracts. The leaf and flower extracts displayed a protecting effect, with an increase in about 20 and 11 % of the OIT values, respectively. However, such protection was smaller than that conferred by the synthetic antioxidants utilized. As for the thermal analysis results, it was noticed that EL presented the highest thermal stability among the extracts.