Impact of some edible plants on buffering gastric juice acidity

Abstract

The present study deals with the investigation of total acidity, acid-neutralizing
capacity (ANC) and mineral contents in some edible plants in order to determine their
effect on neutralizing the acidity of gastric juice. The investigated plants are radish,
cabbage, carrot, tomato, apricot and banana. The “total acidity” reflects the volume of
0.1 N HCl needed to decrease the pH of 50 ml of each plant syrup by one unit.
The maximum total acidity was 75 ml for apricot, then 54 ml for carrot, 48 ml
for cabbage and 38 ml for each of banana and radish. The minimum value was 15 ml
for tomato.
Apricot, carrot and cabbage exhibited a relatively high ANC (viz. 6.7, 5.1 and
4.6 ml, respectively), while tomato and radish leaves exhibited a low ANC (viz. 1.3
and 1.8 ml, respectively).
As regards the mineral contents, cabbage had the highest level of Na (viz. 0.99
mg/g dry weight, DW). The richest source of K (viz. 73.5 mg/g DW) was tomato.
Apricot showed the highest Ca content (viz. 38 mg/g DW) and Mg content (viz. 24
mg/g DW). Heavy metals showed wide variations. Cu contents ranged between 0.012
(for banana) and 0.0035 mg/g DW (for both carrot and radish). The highest Zn
content (viz. 0.112 mg/g DW) and Cd content (viz. 0.004 mg/g DW) was in banana.
The findings suggest that some of the studied plants (viz. apricot, carrot and
cabbage) reflect a good buffering effect according to their relatively high total acidity
and ANC. In addition, carrot, radish and cabbage may play a good role in reducing
gastric juice-acidity since they contain relatively high contents of Mg, which is one of
the suitable metals usually used in manufacturing antiacids.