Fig 1.
Structure of a) phytanic acid which cannot be degraded via β-oxidation and initially has to be converted into b) pristanic acid via α-oxidation before further metabolism.
Table 1.
Composition of the digestion fluids.
Fig 2.
GC/MS full scan chromatogram of the samples after treatment with artificial digestion juices whereas samples consisted of (a) the pure phytyl palmitate standard (b) the phytyl palmitate standard embedded in the lipid extract of red bell pepper (c) the blank sample (d) the control sample of the phytyl palmitate standard, with identified peaks (1) 16:0-trimethylsilyl ester (TMS) (2) phytyl-trimethylsilyl ether (TMS), (3) 18:2-TMS, (4) 18:1-TMS, (5) 18:0-TMS, (6) phytyl-16:0.
Table 2.
trans-Phytol contents derived from PFAE in different vegetables [mg/100 g FW] and max. tolerable portion size [kg] to fully exploit the TDI (10 mg/d).
Fig 3.
Schematic metabolism of PFAE in the human body with cleavage of PFAE (a) into the free fatty acid and free trans-phytol (b), which is then further metabolized by oxidation into phytenic acid (c) and finally by reduction of the double bond into phytanic acid (d) [6,30].