Antioxidant activities of Edible Bird’s Nest (EBN) / Fatma Nabilah Muhammad Fakhran, Siti Azima Abdul Muttalib and Eddie Ti Tjih Tan

Edible bird’s nest (EBN) is well-known as an expensive animal product. This product is the saliva of swiftlets that has been proven to give many health benefits. Existing studies showed that saliva contains high antioxidant properties which contributed to the benefits. However, the antioxidant properties of EBN have not been reviewed. This paper aims to review the antioxidant properties of EBN through existing pieces of literature. With that, an in-depth search on Web of Science (WoS)b was carried out using the keywords “antioxidant”, “edible bird’s nest”, “enzymatic hydrolysis” and “sialic acid”. It was found that the most common method for antioxidant quantification of EBN was DPPH assay. DPPH assay antioxidant activity of the EBN treated by enzymatic hydrolysis is significantly higher than other sample preparation methods. The overall findings suggest that EBN antioxidant studies open up opportunities for research and development of EBN as a health food which is gaining attention from the community.