ABSTRACT
The concentration and composition of minerals that are essential for a healthy human may vary depending on certain periods such as pregnancy, lactation, infancy, and senility. These are also associated with the sensitivities to various foods (allergies and intolerances), lifestyles, and activities of people. Mineral deficiency can cause various disorders, such as growth and development disorders, learning retardation, muscle aches, slow healing of wounds, anemia, osteoporosis, and goiter. For this reason, individuals need to regulate their dietary habits to compensate for these problems. However, factors such as the individual’s state of health and/or the consumption of various foods together cause mineral deficiency by limiting the absorption of certain minerals. Nowadays, to solve the widely-reported mineral deficiency problem, several foods have been fortified with some specific minerals by various methods that provide controlled release during digestion. Nonetheless, the direct fortification of foods with some minerals can cause undesirable sensory properties. They may also act as activators and accelerate undesired reactions in foods. To prevent such problems, encapsulation techniques are widely used toward the incorporation of minerals in functional food products. Spray drying, a common, fast, and efficient process for the encapsulation of food active components, is being commonly used as an alternative method for the encapsulation of minerals. In this chapter, we address various aspects related to mineral deficiency and the encapsulation of these bioactive compounds by spray drying (including advantages and drawbacks of this technique) as a solution to such a challenge.
