Production of functional food, fruit ravioli with antihypertensive peptides

Hypertension is one of the major independent risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. Angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) plays an important role in regulation of blood pressure as well as cardiovascular function. It converts angiotensin I into angiotensin II in blood, which causes the muscles surrounding blood vessels to contract and narrow the vessels thus increasing the pressure within the blood vessels and may lead to hypertension. ACE was also reported to inactivate bradykinin, a vasodilator. ACE inhibitors have achieved widespread usage in the treatment of cardiovascular and renal diseases mainly in the treatment of hypertension. In the present study, bacteria isolated from OMFED curd were utilized to produce anti-hypertensive peptides from milk. The peptides were used for the development of a novel physiologically functional food, watermelon ravioli, having anti-hypertensive property. ACE cleaves hippuryl -L-histidyl-L-leucine (HHL) into hippuric acid (HA) and histidyl leucine (HL). Production of anti-hypertensive peptides was evaluated by direct spectrophotometric determination of HA. The extent of HA released is directly propotional to ACE activity. The amount of HA was determined by using HA standard graph. Inhibitory activity of the anti-hypertensive peptides produced by fermentation of milk in presencce of the isolated bacteria, was compared to a known inhibitor of ACE (captopril)