الفهرس 
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Abstract
The present research deals with acrylamide (AA) component that come in foods during frying. A trial to minimize or reduce AA in foods is the main objective of this study. Spearmint plant was chosen to study its effect on reducing AA in chips. Phytochemical analysis of spearmint methanolic extract (ME) revealed the presence of terpenes, tannins, flavonoids, saponins, glycosides, alkaloids and phenolic glycosides. Results revealed that spearmint methanolic extract is rich in phenolic compounds (35.65 mg GAE/g extract). These phenolic components characterized with the presence of hydroxyl beside methoxy groups that increase the antioxidant activity of the plant extract. HPLC technique for spearmint polyphenols showed the presence of seven components with higher antioxidant capacity. Antioxidant capacity can be measured through the radical scavenging activity. AA converted in body to glycidamide (GA) that conjugated with GSH. The previous reaction reduces cellular GSH. Subsequently the oxidative stress increased in body and causes hazard effects. Spearmint methanolic extract gave a higher scavenging for NO. radical (52.2%) than that of quercetin (44.61%). Superoxide dismutase and hydroxyl radical scavenging activities of the same extract revealed an inhibition of 58.6 and 56.3% under the same concentration of 400 µg/ml, respectively. Also ME has a reducing power and could be easily convert iron from ferric (Fe+3) to ferrous (Fe+2) to prove its effect as antioxidant. On other hand, some pretreatments which include soaking in both of acetic acid and inorganic salts, blanching and ME were used to reduce acrylamide content in chips. ME pretreatment was the most efficient one and gave the highest reduction percentage value (82.93%) at concentration of 50 ppm ME in comparison with other treatments. ME represents a natural and safe pretreatment for food industry which is able to reduce AA content successfully. An obvious relationship between reducing sugars (RS) and AA reduction was observed through ME pretreatment which proves that RS are one of the precursors of AA. A biological experiment was made using albino mice to study the in vivo effect of the spearmint methanolic extract using 7 groups and 6 treatments. Mice treated with AA plus ME (group VI) or AA plus AG (group VII), showed that ME treatment increase total protein content in serum, liver and brain tissue than that resulted in AG treatment in comparison with the positive control (AA group). Also mice treated with AA+ME, have average values 70.62 mg/dl and 43.19 mg/dl lower than treated with AA+AG which gave the average values of 72.17 and 50.57 mg/dl for cholesterol and urea content, respectively. While both of them gave mean values lesser than AA group except in urea level which increased in group VII. As AG is considered an essential compound for urea formation in urea cycle. Results revealed also that when mice treated with AA (group V), significant decrease in catalase activity in liver and brain tissue was observed. SOD in liver and GSH in serum and brain tissue gave also a significant decreased values. Estimation of GSH activity gave decreased percentage values in both liver (9.88 %) and brain tissue (10.65 %) indicated that AA harmful effect in brain was bigger than that in liver.