Research Information System
The 2nd International Symposium on Traditional Foods from Adriatic to Caucasus, Macedonia, 1 - 04 October 2013, pp.543
Coffee has an important place in Turkish culture and consumed in Turkey for more than 4 century. Coffee seeds are primarily grown in equatorial regions and exported to all over the world. There was a coffee shortage during the World Wars because it’s limited growing regions. Additionally it causes anxiety for some sensitive people due to its caffeine content. For these reasons, coffee addicted people produced alternative coffee-like beverages from local fruits and nuts. Additionally, these coffee-like beverages have some health beneficial effects. Just like Turkish coffee, Carob, nigella, pistacia have been commercially produced and commonly used as coffee-like beverages after roasting and milling process. In the present study, they were undertaken to determine their total phenolic content and antioxidant activity. These coffee-like beverages were prepared as Turkish coffee with regard to their recipes. Five grams of each powders and sugar were added into 150 mL water, heated and stirred a few times until boiling. Results revealed that carob coffee has the highest total phenolic content (17.98 ± 0.18 mg of GAE/g dw) which was followed by pistacia coffee (10.52±0.06) and nigella seed coffee (4.02±0.05). Parallel results were obtained for antioxidant activity. The antioxidant activity of carob, pistacia and nigella coffees were determined as 0.58±0.01, 0.67±0.00 and 4.93±0.47 g dw/mg DPPH, respectively. Even though the big differences between total phenolic contents, the little difference in antioxidant activities of carob and pistacia coffees indicate that phenolics of pistacia coffee have stronger antioxidant activity than phenolics of carob coffee.