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Current consumers continuously demand safer and higher quality products in the global market. Essential oils derived from plants and spices have gained importance as natural replacers of compounds of synthetic origin. They provide clean labels that satisfy consumer trends and function to mitigate one of the main mechanisms of food deterioration: lipid oxidation. This work aims to present an overview of the sources, extraction methods, and studies assessing the antioxidant capacity of essential oils, emphasizing their applications in diverse food matrices. The review focuses on studies from 2010 to present towards providing recent information on the direct addition of these natural antioxidants in oils, meat, dairy products, and other foods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) has been recognized as a technique with several advantages over other extraction methods, such as reduction of costs, extraction time, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions. In this study, MAE was performed to obtain essential oils from two different herbs (basil and epazote). A factorial design was conducted in order to determine the effect of solvent quantity, power, and heating time on essential oil yields. Chemical composition, physical properties and yield percentage of essential oils from MAE were compared with essential oils obtained by steam distillation (SD). Amount of solvent and heating time significantly affected the yields (p<0.05). Chemical composition and physical properties of the essential oils from basil and epazote were not affected by the extraction method (MAE or SD), with similar yielding obtained by both methods (p<0.05). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]