Hypocholestrolemic effect of pomegranate yoghurt

Abstract

Uses of agricultural wastes such as juice-making wastes as alternative low-cost sources of phenolic compounds are in increase. In this case, Pomegranate is a good example. About 50% of its weight is peel, which is usually discarded as waste. However, it has a significant portion of polyphenols. For these reasons we used experimental animals to study the effect of pomegranate juice or pomegranate’s peel extract incorporated in yogurt manufacture as a heart healthy dairy product. Our results indicated that yogurt with either pomegranate's juice or peel's water extract has good effect on lowering Total lipid, Total tri glycerides and Total cholesterol. In contrast the lipid peroxidation determined by Malondialdehyde was decreased. In the same trend, the histopathological changes in liver and heart of rat groups fed orally with Pomegranate's juice yogurt (JG) and Peel's extract yogurt (EG) showed marked improvement and no histopathological changes to be nearest to negative control group (NC). It could be concluded that JG and EG treatments under our study are useful for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia.