Vegetable Foods: a Cheap Source of Proteins and Peptides with Antihypertensive, Antioxidant, and Other Less Occurrence Bioactivities

Despite less explored than foods from animal origin, plant derived foods also contain biologically active proteins and peptides. Bioactive peptides can be present as an independent entity in the food or, more frequently, can be in a latent state as part of the sequence of a protein. Release from that protein requires protein hydrolysis by enzymatic digestion, fermentation or autolysis. Different methodologies have been used to test proteins and peptides bioactivities. Fractionation, separation, and identification techniques have also been employed for the isolation and identification of bioactive proteins or peptides. In this work, proteins and peptides from plant derived foods exerting antihypertensive, antioxidant, hypocholesterolemic, antithrombotic, and immunostimulating capacities or ability to reduce food intake have been reviewed.