JP5014320B2 - Green leaf green dried powder - Google Patents

Description

  TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a dried green leaf green powder and a method for producing the dried green leaf powder, and in particular, to a dried green leaf green powder having a high concentration of highly functional components such as iridoids and polyphenols while having a bright green color.

  Tochu's bark has long been prized as one of the five major Chinese herbal medicines. In recent years, attention has been focused on the high functionality and usefulness of components such as iridoids and polyphenols contained in Tochu Nakaba. In particular, iridoids have been shown to be useful for blood pressure lowering action, analgesic action, and improvement of lipid metabolism (see Non-Patent Document 1 and Non-Patent Document 2), and are currently drunk mainly as tea.

  However, high functional components such as iridoids contained in Tochu leaves start to decrease due to autolysis from the stage of harvesting the leaves. In addition, most of the products currently marketed as Tochu tea are brown fermented tea leaves, and the content of high-functional components of iridoids is greatly reduced during the fermentation process, and bitterness is also increased. Become. For this reason, in the dry tea leaves for beverages that are generally widely distributed, the content of iridoids is less than 1% of the total tea leaves.

  Then, the manufacturing method of the Tochu dry tea leaf which contains these high functional ingredients abundantly is examined. In recent years, it has been found that green Tochu dried tea leaves produced in the same manner as Japanese tea contain more useful components such as iridoids and polyphenols than brown fermented tea. For example, Patent Document 1 discloses a method for producing green potato Nakaba containing about 3.2% of geniposide acid. In this method, steaming of tea leaves is performed in the same manner as Japanese tea, followed by drying treatment. Here, in the case of Tochu, the enzyme is inactivated by steaming to suppress the progress of the fermentation, so that the green color can be maintained and the self-digestion action can be suppressed to prevent deterioration over time. However, since high-performance components such as iridoids and polyphenols decrease due to heat degradation and elution / dissipation due to steam, the content of these high-performance components in the Tochu dry leaves obtained by conventional steaming heating is Not necessarily enough.

  In addition, when drinking as Tochu tea, highly functional components such as iridoids and polyphenols cannot be sufficiently extracted into tea and remain in the leaves, so these highly functional components are effectively ingested. There is a problem that can not be. On the other hand, if it can be eaten as it is as a favorite product, it can be sensed that these high-functional ingredients can be efficiently consumed, but currently commercially available dried Tochu tea leaves are bitter. Etc. are strong and are not very suitable as luxury goods.

Health Science Vol. 20 No. 2 (2004) P166-176 Journal of Atherosclerosis Thrombosis Vol. 12, no. 4 (2005) P185-190 Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-150961

  The present invention has been made in view of the above-described conventional technology, and the problem to be solved is a vivid green color that contains a high-functional component such as iridoids and polyphenols at a high concentration while having a bright green color. It is to provide a dry powder.

  In order to solve the problems of the prior art, the present inventors have conducted intensive studies and, as a raw material, used the raw leaves that were cut into a rectangular shape with an average length of any two sides of 5 mm or less as a raw material. It has been found that by performing the drying treatment, a green dried green leaf powder containing high-functional components such as iridoids and polyphenols at a high concentration while having a bright green color is obtained. In addition, it was found that the green dried green leaves powder thus obtained has little bitterness and is suitable for food applications, and the present invention has been completed.

In other words, the dried green leaf powder according to the present invention uses the dried green leaf that is cut into a rectangular shape with an average length of any two sides of 5 mm or less as a raw material, without undergoing other heat treatment, In a dry atmosphere with a humidity of 40% or less, under the condition that the temperature of the leaf measured by an infrared non-contact thermometer is 50 to 70 ° C., the raw material 杜中生 葉 is dried and within 30 minutes after the start of the drying treatment It is obtained by reducing the water content to 30% or less, the water content in the leaf is 5% or less, and contains 10% by mass or more of an iridoid compound and 4% by mass or more of a polyphenol compound. Is.
Moreover, in the said nakanaka leaf green dry powder, it is suitable that an iridoid compound is geniposide acid and asperroside, and the asperloside content in this iridoid compound whole quantity is 40-70 mass%.

Moreover, it is preferable that the dried green leaf green powder is finely pulverized to an average diameter of 3 to 14 μm.
In addition, the functional food according to the present invention is characterized in that it contains 20% by mass or more of the above-mentioned tsunaka leaf green dry powder.

  The dried green leaf green powder of the present invention is very useful as a functional food because it has a bright green color and contains high-functional components such as iridoids and polyphenols at a high concentration.

The dried green leaf green powder according to the present invention contains 10% by mass or more of an iridoid compound and 4% by mass or more of a polyphenol compound.
Here, the iridoid compound is known as a compound having 1-isopropyl-2,3-dimethylcyclopentane in its structure. Such an iridoid compound is contained in 10% by mass or more of the total amount of the powder in the dried green leaf green powder of the present invention. In addition, it is preferable that the iridoid compound consists of geniposide acid and asperroside, and the asperoside content in the total amount of the iridoid compound is 40 to 70% by mass in the dried green leaf powder of the present invention.

  The polyphenol compound is known as a compound having a plurality of phenolic hydroxyl groups in its structure. Such a polyphenol compound is contained in 4% by mass or more of the total amount of the powder in the dried green leaf green powder of the present invention. Examples of the polyphenol compound include chlorogenic acid, rutin, quercetin, nicotiflorin, kaempferol and the like.

  In addition, as a conventional method for producing dried green leaves, the enzyme is inactivated by steaming to suppress the progress of fermentation, thereby maintaining the green color and inhibiting degradation by the enzyme to prevent deterioration over time. However, high-functional components such as iridoids and polyphenols have a problem that they are reduced due to thermal degradation, elution and dissipation due to steam. Alternatively, a method of drying the Tochu tea leaves at a high temperature to inactivate the enzyme has been carried out, but it causes thermal decomposition of the high-functional components, so that these high-functional components are not necessarily retained at a sufficient content. It is hard to say that it was done. On the other hand, in order to avoid thermal degradation or elution by steam of highly functional components, it may be possible to perform drying at a relatively low temperature. However, in this case, the enzyme is not sufficiently deactivated, and in addition, the tea leaves are dried. However, it takes a very long time.

  Tomato leaves gradually turn purple when left after harvesting, tend to be purple particularly at high humidity, and the veins turn dark purple. Although the cause of this is not clear, for example, as seen in gardenia pigments, the production of natural pigments by iridoids can be considered. Recently, it has been reported that iridoid glycosides and glucosidase play an important role in protein denaturation due to insect damage in the mosquito family Ibota. Because of the tendency of discoloration from damaged or strained or stressed parts, the glucosidase, polyphenol oxidase and other enzymes contained in the organelles dissipate out of the endoplasmic reticulum for some reason. It is possible that the iridoid glycosides contained in the leaf act as a protein cross-linking agent and bind to the protein to produce a pigment. Here, since these self-digestion actions are considered to occur under water-containing conditions, in order to prevent discoloration of the Tochu Nakasei leaves and reduction of iridoid compounds, etc., the water content in the leaves is removed as quickly as possible. It is considered important to prevent the effects from occurring.

  From these facts, the present inventor studied by paying attention to (1) drying without making the leaf temperature higher than necessary and (2) quickly removing moisture in the drying step. . Then, the present inventors have performed the drying treatment using the raw leaves that are cut into a rectangular shape with an average length of any two sides of 5 mm or less as a raw material, thereby preventing inactivation of conventional enzymes. Even under relatively low temperature conditions of 50 to 70 ° C., which was considered sufficient, the water in the leaves can be quickly removed in a short time. As a result, the vivid green color is maintained, and iridoids and polyphenols are retained. It has been found that a dried dry green leaf powder containing these high-functional components at a high concentration can be obtained by suppressing the decrease in high-functional components such as.

The dried green leaf green powder of the present invention can be obtained, for example, by the production method described below.
First, as a raw material, the bamboo leaves that are cut into a rectangular shape with an average length of any two sides of 5 mm or less are used. Here, the bamboo leaves are meant to be dried after harvest and before drying, and may be produced by cultivation or produced from nature. For example, fresh leaves collected before the fall of the current year, for example, from 4 to 10 months, preferably from 5 to 8 months, more preferably from 7 to 8 months can be used. Although the cutting method of 杜中生 葉 is not particularly limited, a commercially available shredder cutter or slicer can be used. For example, by cutting the raw leaves with a shredder cutter with a blade interval of 5 mm or less, the opposing two sides can be formed into a strip shape with a length of 5 mm or less. Alternatively, once cut into strips of 5 mm or less, the obtained strip-shaped fresh leaves are cut again such that the longitudinal direction is perpendicular to the slot, so that each side has a length of 5 mm. It can be made into the following substantially square shape. In addition, if the length of the two opposite sides of Tochu Nakaba cut into a rectangular shape exceeds 5 mm on average, the leaf temperature may increase more than necessary, and in addition, the drying process takes too much time. As a result, it is not possible to suppress a decrease in high-functional components. It is only necessary that the length of the two opposite sides of the cocoon leaf after cutting is 5 mm or less on average, and more preferably 3 mm or less on average. In addition, it is more preferable that the raw material cocoon leaves have a rectangular shape in which each side has a length of 5 mm or less.

  That is, in this invention, the temperature of the leaf is lowered to a low temperature of about 50 to 70 ° C. in the drying process by cutting the cocoon leaves in advance into a rectangular shape having an average length of any two sides of 5 mm or less. It is possible to quickly remove the moisture from the tea leaves while maintaining it. For this reason, since the loss by heat of highly functional components, such as iridoids and polyphenols, is few, and also the reduction | decrease by a self-digestion effect | action is suppressed, the green dry powder which contains these highly functional components in high concentration is obtained.

  In Fig. 1, 2 kg of cocoon leaves are cut into a strip shape with a short side of 2 cm, and 2 kg of cocoon leaves are cut into a strip shape with a short side of 3 mm. These show changes over time in the temperature and humidity near the kettle outlet when the drying process is performed for 7 minutes. From Fig. 1, the maximum temperature of the air at the outlet of the pot is 60.5 ° C for the 2cm strip-shaped cocoon leaves, and the maximum temperature of the air at the outlet is 64 ° C for the 3mm strip-shaped cocoon leaves. It is considered that the same temperature has been reached. On the other hand, the humidity in the vicinity of the outlet of the kettle has been almost flat immediately after the leaves are put in, but has decreased significantly thereafter. This is because some percent of the water in the leaf decreases rapidly immediately after the addition, so that the humidity balances between the amount of water in the leaf and the amount of air blown, and then the amount of water in the leaf reaches a certain level. It is considered that the amount of moisture evaporation becomes gradual, and as a result, the humidity is decreasing. Looking at the time it takes for the humidity to drop after the tea leaves are added, it takes 4 minutes for a 2 cm strip shape, but 2 minutes for a 3 mm strip shape. It can be seen that moisture is removed more quickly in the case of strips. In addition, the weight of Tochu Nakaba after 7 minutes of drying treatment is 1.678 kg in the case of 2 cm strips, and 1.06 kg in the case of 3 mm strips, and by using 3 mm strips of Tochu Nakasei leaves, Despite the same drying time, it is understood that more than twice as much water has been removed as compared to the 2 cm strip.

  Also, for example, when trying to finally pulverize the dried leaves that were dried without being cut in advance, a rubber component called gutta percha contained in the dried leaves is used as a binder to form a film on the stone mill. Alternatively, in a pulverizer using a cutter blade, clay-like massive particles are generated and become a load on the pulverizer. As a result, heat may be generated during pulverization, leading to decomposition of high-functional components. On the other hand, in the present invention, the cocoon leaves are cut in advance into a rectangular shape having an average length of 5 mm or less on either side, so that the generation of lump powder due to gutta percha during the pulverization process is greatly reduced. You can also.

  In addition, the leaves of Tochu grow up to 30 cm or more, and the veins have a thickness of 5 mm or more. In the case of such a large cocoon leaf, there is a difference in moisture evaporation between the veins and the leaves in the drying process, and the leaf veins are purple due to self-digestion. This is thought to be due to the structure being stressed around the veins and the cells of the veins being destroyed in a state sufficiently containing water. As a result, useful components such as iridoids are decomposed to reduce the content, and in addition, the green color is lost due to discoloration. In particular, since the veins contain a lot of highly functional components, the drying of the veins is extremely important. However, with the conventional drying method, it is very difficult to quickly dry a vein portion having a thickness of 5 mm or more. On the other hand, in the present invention, the length of either two sides facing each other in advance is cut into a rectangular shape having an average of 5 mm or less, so that the drying time between the leaf veins and the leaves is uniform, and the leaf veins are The water content of the tea leaves can be quickly removed, so that the discoloration of the tea leaves due to the self-digesting action can be kept low.

  Moreover, it is preferable to perform a drying process on the conditions whose leaf temperature measured with the infrared non-contact thermometer is 50-70 degreeC in the dry atmosphere of 40% or less of humidity. Conventionally, in the production of dried green tea leaves, the enzyme is deactivated by steaming heat treatment to suppress the progress of fermentation, so that the green color is maintained and self-digestion is suppressed to prevent deterioration over time. However, in steaming heat treatment, heat treatment is performed under high temperature and high humidity, so that high-functional components such as iridoids and polyphenols are reduced due to thermal degradation and elution / dissipation due to steam. For this reason, the drying treatment is preferably performed in a dry atmosphere with a humidity of 40% or less. If the leaf temperature during the drying process is less than 50 ° C., it takes too much time to dry, the self-digestion action is promoted, and discoloration or deterioration of the high-functional component occurs. On the other hand, when it exceeds 70 ° C., the high-functional component is thermally decomposed, so that the content of the high-functional component in the product is reduced. The drying treatment is particularly preferably performed under conditions of a drying atmosphere of 20% or less and a leaf temperature of 50 to 65 ° C. In addition, it is necessary to perform the drying process of tochu leaf until the water content in the leaf is about 5%.

  Here, in the drying process, it is preferable to reduce the amount of water in the Tochu leaf to 30% or less within 30 minutes after the start of the drying process in the initial stage of the process. In other words, the present invention suppresses the discoloration of the leaves and the reduction of iridoid compounds due to the self-digestion reaction by removing the water in the leaves very quickly despite the low temperature of about 50 to 70 ° C. It is possible to do that. For this reason, when the removal rate of water in the leaves is slow in the drying process, the self-digestion reaction gradually proceeds according to the time required for water removal, leading to discoloration and a reduction in iridoid compounds. In particular, under the temperature condition of 50 to 70 ° C., the self-digestion reaction is rather promoted, so it is very important to quickly remove the moisture in the leaves. The drying speed varies depending on the size of the dryer and the processing amount of Tochu leaves, but more specifically, when processing 0 to 2.5 kg of Tochu tea leaves at a time, the leaves are within 10 minutes. In the case of treating the middle moisture content of 30% or less and 2.5 to 5 kg of Tochu tea leaves at a time, it is desirable to reduce the leaf moisture content to 30% or less within 20 minutes.

  Moreover, it is preferable to finely pulverize the dried bamboo leaves after the drying treatment to have an average diameter of 3 to 14 μm. The method of fine pulverization is not particularly limited, and for example, a jet mill type pulverizer or an airflow type pulverizer can be used. In particular, the use of an airflow type pulverizer is preferable because discoloration after processing is hardly seen as compared with other methods. As a commercially available airflow type pulverizer, for example, STAY (manufactured by Barley Japan) may be mentioned. The dried green leaf green powder of the present invention has an average diameter of, for example, 3 to 14 μm, preferably 4 to 8 μm, particularly preferably 4.5 to 6 μm, for example 2 to 14 μm, preferably 2 to 8 μm, particularly Preferably, it has a median diameter in the range of 4 to 5 μm, for example, a mode diameter in the range of 2 to 32 μm, preferably 2 to 9 μm, particularly preferably 4 to 6 μm.

  The dried green leaf green powder of the present invention obtained as described above contains an iridoid compound and a polyphenol compound at a very high concentration that could not be obtained by conventional methods. Moreover, although it is useful to drink as tea conventionally, since the dry powder obtained by the above has very little bitterness, it is especially useful as a functional food to eat directly. For this reason, the functional food of the present invention contains 20% by mass or more of the dried green powder obtained as described above in the total amount of food. In addition, in the functional food of this invention, it is suitable to contain a natural surfactant powder further. By containing the natural surfactant powder, it becomes easy to uniformly mix the dry powder in water.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in more detail based on the description of Examples, but the present invention is not limited to these Examples.
Example 1
2 kg of cocoon leaves were cut into strips with a shredder cutter with a spacing of 2 mm, and further, these strips were put so that the longitudinal direction of the strips was almost perpendicular to the shredders, and cut into a substantially square shape with 2 mm on each side. The cut nakanaka leaves were dried for about 1.5 hours by microwave heating under reduced pressure. In addition, the leaf temperature during drying was 60 to 65 ° C., and the humidity was 10% or less. The moisture content after drying was 5% or less. The dried leaves were coarsely pulverized and then finely pulverized with a fine pulverizer STAY manufactured by Barry Japan, to obtain a green dry fine powder.

Example 2
2 kg of green leaves were cut into a substantially square shape with a side of 2 mm using a shredder cutter with a spacing of 2 mm. Cut the cut Nakaba leaves into the kettle. The number of revolutions was 15 and the kettle was heated at 180 ° C., and the air flow was adjusted to adjust the ambient temperature in the kettle to around 57 ° C. At this time, the leaf surface temperature (measured with a non-contact infrared temperature sensor) was 60 ° C., and the humidity was 14%. In this condition, the pot was roasted for 9 minutes and dried to a water content of 50%. Thereafter, the tea leaves were arranged on a shelf, the humidity was 14%, and drying was performed with warm air of 62 ° C. for 90 minutes to reduce the water content to 5% or less. The dried leaves were coarsely pulverized and then finely pulverized with a fine pulverizer STAY manufactured by Barry Japan, to obtain a green dry fine powder.

Example 3
2 kg of cocoon leaves were cut into strips having a length of 2 mm facing each other using a shredder cutter with a spacing of 2 mm. Cut the cut Nakaba leaves into the kettle. The number of revolutions is 15 and the kettle is heated at 180 ° C, and the air flow is adjusted to adjust the ambient temperature in the kettle to around 64 ° C. The leaf surface temperature (measured with a non-contact infrared temperature sensor) is 60 ° C. The humidity was 13%. A kettle roast was performed for 7 minutes under these conditions and dried to a moisture content of 63%. Then, it dried at about 15% of humidity and 60 degreeC with the re-dryer for 40 minutes, and finely pulverized with the fine pulverizer STAY of Burley Japan, and the green dry fine powder was obtained.

Comparative Example 1
2 kg of green leaves were put into a kettle heated to 250 ° C. and roasted for 15 minutes at 15 rpm. At this time, the leaf surface temperature (measured with a non-contact infrared temperature sensor) was 75 ° C., and the humidity was 14%. Thereafter, it was dried in a re-dryer at a humidity of about 15% and 50 to 60 ° C. for 40 minutes. The moisture content after drying was 5% or less. The dried leaves were pulverized with a jet mill to obtain a green dry fine powder.

Comparative Example 2
After cutting 2 kg of cocoon leaves with a shredder cutter into a strip shape with two sides facing each other, they were put into a steamer and steamed at 97-98 ° C. for 3 minutes. After forcibly cooling to room temperature, it was dried to a water content of 5% or less with warm air at 100 ° C. The dried leaves were pulverized with a jet mill to obtain a green dry fine powder.

The contents of iridoids and polyphenols were measured by HPLC (ethanol extraction) for the dried green tea powders of Examples 1 to 3 and Comparative Examples 1 and 2 obtained as described above. The results are shown in Table 1 below.

  As shown in Table 1 above, in Examples 1 to 3 using as a raw material cocoon leaves that were cut into a square shape of 2 mm square or a strip shape with a short side of 2 mm, the iridoids 13 to 14%, the polyphenols 4 to A green dried green powder of 5% containing these highly functional components at a very high concentration was obtained. Further, the asperoside content in the total amount of iridoids was about 50%, and it was also confirmed that the asperoside was contained at a high concentration that has not been heretofore known.

  On the other hand, the dried green leaf powder of Comparative Example 1 that had been dried without cutting in advance was 2.8% iridoids and 3.5% polyphenols compared to Examples 1-3. The content of the highly functional component was small. Moreover, in Comparative Example 2 in which the dried leaves of cocoon leaves cut into 2 cm strips were subjected to a conventional steaming process, the content of these high-functional components was further reduced, iridoids 1%, polyphenols 2 %.

Using 2 kg of 杜 nakasei leaves cut into strips with a short side of 2 cm and 2 kg of nakanakasei leaves cut into strips with a short side of 3 mm, using a tea leaf kettle roasting machine at a pot temperature of 180 ° C for 7 minutes each It is a time-dependent change of the temperature and humidity near the pot exit at the time of performing a drying process.

Claims (4)

Non-infrared non-contact temperature in a dry atmosphere with humidity of 40% or less without using any other heat treatment, using the raw leaves cut into a rectangular shape with an average length of any two sides of 5 mm or less. It is obtained by drying the raw material 杜中生 葉 under the condition that the temperature of the leaf measured by the meter is 50 to 70 ° C., and reducing the water content in the 杜 naka leaf to 30% or less within 30 minutes after the start of the drying treatment. ,
A green dried green leaf powder containing 5% or less of an iridoid compound and 4% or more by mass of a polyphenol compound with a water content of 5% or less in the leaves.   The green dried green powder according to claim 1, wherein the iridoid compound is geniposide acid and asperroside, and the asperoside content in the total amount of the iridoid compound is 40 to 70% by mass.   3. The dried green leaf green powder according to claim 1, wherein the dried green leaf powder is finely pulverized to an average diameter of 3 to 14 μm. A functional food comprising 20% by mass or more of the dried green leaf green powder according to any one of claims 1 to 3 .

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