ABSTRACT
Food manufacturers often want to incorporate active ingredients with specific functional attributes into their products, for example, colors, flavors, nutraceuticals, antimicrobials, antioxidants, and preservatives (Table 1.1). Many of these active ingredients cannot simply be incorporated into these products because they are physically or chemically unstable, they are incompatible with the product matrix, or they lack the appropriate functional attributes. These challenges can often be overcome by incorporating the active ingredient into some kind of delivery system before it is introduced into the final product (Table 1.2). Delivery systems can be designed to have a number of potential benefits to the food industry: incorporation of active ingredients into food matrices without adversely affecting quality attributes such as appearance, texture, flavor, or stability; protection against chemical, physical, or biological degradation; off-flavor masking (such as bitterness or astringency); the ability to deliver active ingredients to particular sites-of-action thereby increasing their efficacy; improvement of product storage and handling;
Table 1.1 Examples of Active Ingredients That May Need to Be Encapsulated before They Can Be Successfully Utilized within Foods and Beverages
extension of product shelf life (McClements et al. 2009a,b; Sagalowicz and Leser 2010; Sanguansri and Augustin 2006; Velikov and Pelan 2008). For example, a beverage cannot simply be formed by mixing flavor oil with water and other ingredients because the flavor oil is normally partly immiscible with water and would quickly separate. Instead, the flavor oil must first be converted into small particles (such as microemulsion or emulsion droplets) that remain stable within the final product (Given 2009; McClements 2011).
