Antioxidant and Cytotoxicological Effects of Aloe vera Food Supplements

Figure 1

Sample preparation scheme. Leaves from Aloe vera are cut, washed, and trimmed to get the whole leaves. For HTST-juice, the whole leaves are ground to a particulate slurry, which is press-filtered, and the resulting juice is pasteurized. Whole leaf powder is produced by filtration of HTST-juice through diatomaceous earth, and the aloin content is then reduced by charcoal treatment, which itself is removed by another filtration; the resulting liquid is spray-dried resulting in a 100x concentrated powder (WLP). The whole leaf can also be peeled, washed, and pasteurized to get the inner leaf fillet. This fillet can be mashed and then treated like HTST-juice to get a 200x concentrated inner leaf gel (ILG) powder, or it can be (probably sliced) belt-dried and crushed to get a 200x concentrated inner leaf gel powder, rich in fibres (ILF). The main difference between WLP/ILG and ILF is that the latter has no charcoal treatment and is exposed to higher temperatures during the drying process. The 1 : 1 mixture of ILG and ILF results in a 200x inner leaf blended (ILB) powder.