Design of lemon–mustard nutraceutical beverages based on synergism among antioxidants and in vitro antioxidative, hypoglycaemic and hypocholesterolemic activities: characterization and shelf life studies

The present study has endeavoured a unique application of the sleep hormone, melatonin as a food antioxidant in synergism with other antioxidants. Two lemon–mustard based nutraceutical beverages, brown mustard beverage (BMB) and yellow mustard beverage (YMB), were formulated using brown and yellow mustard seed extracts based on highest synergistic combination of four antioxidants (melatonin and ɣ-tocopherol from mustard seeds; ascorbic acid and citric acid from lemon). Evaluation of microbial load, sensory attributes, physicochemical properties, antioxidant activities, hypocholesterolemic and antidiabetic properties (in vitro) of the beverages revealed that YMB had a shelf life over 360 days and BMB over 240 days, vis-à-vis 21 days for the control sample at 4 ± 1 °C. The beverages retained considerable amount of melatonin even after 360 days (87.13 ± 0.92% for BMB and 91.97 ± 0.89% for YMB) of storage in amber-colored glass bottles at 4 ± 1 °C. These antioxidant-rich beverages could be novel designer nutraceutical foods. Besides, this methodology of formulation of the beverages based on synergistic activities of multiple antioxidants could be successfully adopted industrially in development of innovative antioxidant-rich food products.