Abstract: Maillard reaction often occurs in the thermal processing of food, and its products can provide pleasure food flavors and odors, but some of them are also harmful to human health. Some of Maillard reaction products have antibacterial and antioxidant properties. Meanwhile, they can change the functional and processing properties of proteins. Due to the strong antioxidant activity, tea polyphenols (TPs) can inhibit Maillard reaction, but few studies on the effect of polyphenols on the antioxidative and protein properties of Maillard reaction products have been reported. Therefore, this work studied the effects of tea polyphenols on the antioxidant activity and peanut protein characteristics of Maillard reaction products. Glucose was chosen to react with peanut protein, the antioxidant activities of their reaction products (PP-MRPs) was detected, including DPPH radical scavenging ability, ABTS radical scavenging ability and total reduction ability. The above three antioxidative experiments were usually used to evaluate the antioxidant activity of substances. In order to further analyze the application potential of Maillard reaction products in food processing, the protein functional characteristics of reaction products were studied, including foaming and emulsifying properties. In addition, the secondary structure and surface hydrophobicity of the protein reaction products were also analyzed. The results showed that the antioxidant activity of Maillard reaction products increased with the increase of tea polyphenol content at the same temperature. The antioxidant activity of PP-MRPs was the strongest at the addition content of 12 mg TPs for the test of ABTS radical scavenging ability and total reduction. However, the DPPH radical scavenging ability was opposite. At the same temperature, tea polyphenols increased the antioxidant capacity of PP-MRPs, and had a significant effect on the scavenging capacity of DPPH free radical (P<0.05). For example, DPPH radical scavenging ability increased from 68.5% to 93.3% at 70 ℃. In addition, with the increase of TPs content, the fluorescence intensity of the protein decreased from 376. 07 to 288.89, while the hydrophobicity, α-helix and random coil were increased, indicating that TPs or the Maillard reaction could change the protein structure. Finally, the foaming ability of PP-MRPs decreased from 26% to 14.5% and the emulsifying stability increased from 47.45% to 66. 64%, while the foam stability and the emulsifying ability increased firstly and then decreased. The secondary structure of PP-MRPs after Maillard reaction was mainly composed of β-sheet and β-turn, which accounted for more than 60%.