Several studies have shown that food is an important source of many
bioactive compounds that may have a beneficial health impact on human body. Among
them, bioactive peptides have extensively been studied and have proved to possess a
variety of activities such as antihypertensive, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory,
antimicrobial, and many others. These peptides can be natural constituents of foods but
they can also be released from a parent protein present in a food during gastrointestinal
digestion or by an enzyme or microorganism during food processing. The analysis of
bioactive peptides in food samples is a very challenging task due to their wide
concentration dynamic range and the complexity of these samples. The general
workflow usually employed in the investigation of the presence of bioactive peptides in
foods is presented in this chapter. Some important characteristics of bioactive peptides
that need to be taken into account during their analysis are highlighted. Additionally, an
overview of novel strategies to obtain bioactive peptides from food protein
hydrolysates is presented. A separate section is devoted to describe chromatographic
and electrophoretic approaches successfully used for the analysis of food bioactive
peptides. Mass spectrometric techniques dominate in the identification of bioactive
peptides in complex food matrices. Some alternatives to tentatively assign a signal to a
peptide sequence are displayed. In addition, a recent ‘hot topic’ such as the quantitation
of bioactive peptides in complex matrices is included. Information given in this chapter
is based on the most recent literature.
Keywords: Analytical methods, Bioactive peptides, Chromatography, Functional
foods, Mass spectrometry, Protein hydrolysis, Quantitation.
