Nanoemulsions fabricated from food-grade ingredients are being increasingly utilized in the food industry to encapsulate, protect, and deliver lipophilic functional components, such as biologically-active lipids (e.g., ω-3 fatty acids, conjugated linoleic acid) and oil-soluble flavors, vitamins, preservatives, and nutraceuticals. The small size of the particles in nanoemulsions (r<100 nm) means that they have a number of potential advantages over conventional emulsions-higher stability to droplet aggregation and gravitational separation, high optical clarity, ability to modulate product texture, and, increased bioavailability of lipophilic components. On the other hand, there may also be some risks associated with the oral ingestion of nanoemulsions, such as their ability to change the biological fate of bioactive components within the gastrointestinal tract and the potential toxicity of some of the components used in their fabrication. This review article provides an overview of the current status of nanoemulsion formulation, fabrication, properties, applications, biological fate, and potential toxicity with emphasis on systems suitable for utilization within the food and beverage industry.

Food-grade nanoemulsions: formulation, fabrication, properties, performance, biological fate, and potential toxicity.

Research on and the application of polyphenols, have recently attracted great interest in the functional foods, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industries, due to their potential health benefits to humans. However, the effectiveness of polyphenols depends on preserving the stability, bioactivity and bioavailability of the active ingredients. The unpleasant taste of most phenolic compounds also limits their application. The utilization of encapsulated polyphenols, instead of free compounds, can effectively alleviate these deficiencies. The technologies of encapsulation of polyphenols, including spray drying, coacervation, liposome entrapment, inclusion complexation, cocrystallization, nanoencapsulation, freeze drying, yeast encapsulation and emulsion, are discussed in this review. Current research, developments and trends are also discussed.

Encapsulation of polyphenols – a review

Hydrocolloids as emulsifiers and emulsion stabilizers

Nanoemulsions are kinetically stable liquid-in-liquid dispersions with droplet sizes on the order of 100 nm. Their small size leads to useful properties such as high surface area per unit volume, robust stability, optically transparent appearance, and tunable rheology. Nanoemulsions are finding application in diverse areas such as drug delivery, food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and material synthesis. Additionally, they serve as model systems to understand nanoscale colloidal dispersions. High and low energy methods are used to prepare nanoemulsions, including high pressure homogenization, ultrasonication, phase inversion temperature and emulsion inversion point, as well as recently developed approaches such as bubble bursting method. In this review article, we summarize the major methods to prepare nanoemulsions, theories to predict droplet size, physical conditions and chemical additives which affect droplet stability, and recent applications.

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Nanoemulsions: formation, properties and applications

Formation of nanoemulsions stabilized by model food-grade emulsifiers using high-pressure homogenization: Factors affecting particle size

Microencapsulation is a rapidly expanding technology which is a unique way to package materials in the form of micro- and nano-particles, and has been well developed and accepted within the pharmaceutical, chemical, food and many other industries. Spray drying is the most commonly used encapsulation technique for food products. A successful spray drying encapsulation relies on achieving high retention of the core materials especially volatiles and minimum amounts of the surface oil on the powder particles for both volatiles and non-volatiles during the process and storage. The properties of wall and core materials and the prepared emulsion along with the drying process conditions will influence the efficiency and retention of core compounds. This review highlights the new developments in spray drying microencapsulation of food oils and flavours with an emphasis on the encapsulation efficiency during the process and different factors which can affect the efficiency of spray drying encapsulation.

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Encapsulation Efficiency of Food Flavours and Oils during Spray Drying

Re-coalescence of emulsion droplets during high-energy emulsification

Nano-particle encapsulation of fish oil by spray drying

Microencapsulation optimization of natural anthocyanins with maltodextrin, gum Arabic and gelatin

There has been an increased interest in the development of food colorants from natural sources as alternatives to synthetic dyes because of both legislative actions and consumer concerns. Anthocyan...

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Elham Assadpoor

Papers

Encapsulation Efficiency of Food Flavours and Oils during Spray Drying

Re-coalescence of emulsion droplets during high-energy emulsification

Nano-particle encapsulation of fish oil by spray drying

Microencapsulation optimization of natural anthocyanins with maltodextrin, gum Arabic and gelatin

Spray-Drying Microencapsulation of Anthocyanins by Natural Biopolymers: A Review