Reactive carbonyl species (RCS), such as acrolein (ACR), glyoxal (GO), and methylglyoxal (MGO), have received extensive attention recently as a result of their high activity and toxicity in vitro and in vivo. In the present study, propyl gallate (PG), a common food antioxidant, was found to effectively trap more ACR than butylated hydroxytoluene and butylated hydroxyanisole through the formation of mono-ACR adducts (PG-ACR) and di-ACR adducts (PG-2ACR). The two adducts were successfully purified, and their structures were elucidated on the basis of their high-resolution mass spectrometry and 1H, 13C, and two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance data. We further identified that PG-ACR had the ability to continue to trap GO and MGO to form PG-ACR-GO and PG-ACR-MGO, respectively, by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Furthermore, we verified that PG could inhibit the production of ACR, GO, and MGO via trapping these RCS simultaneously to form the corresponding adducts in pound cakes using LC-MS/MS.
Keywords: acrolein; glyoxal; methylglyoxal; pound cakes; propyl gallate.