ABSTRACT
Knowledge of the science and technology of emulsions is important for those working in the food and related industries for a number of reasons. First, many natural and processed foods consist either partly or wholly as emulsions, or have been in an emulsied state sometime during their production, including milk, cream, beverages, infant formula, soups, cake batters, salad dressings, mayonnaise, cream liqueurs, sauces, deserts, dips, salad cream, ice cream, coffee whitener, spreads, butter, and margarine. Second, emulsions are increasingly being utilized as delivery systems for functional food ingredients, such as colors, avors, preservatives, vitamins, and nutraceuticals (Velikov and Pelan 2008, McClements and Li 2010). Emulsion-based delivery systems are usually designed to encapsulate, protect, and release these functional ingredients so as to improve their handling, stability, or efcacy. Emulsion-based food products and delivery systems exhibit a wide range of physicochemical, sensory, and biological characteristics depending on the kinds of ingredients and processing conditions used to create them. Despite this diversity, there are a number of underlying features that are common to this group of products that makes them amenable to study by the scientic discipline known as emulsion science, which combines aspects of physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. Traditionally, the fundamental principles of emulsion science were largely derived from the disciplines of colloid science, interfacial chemistry, polymer science, and uid mechanics. Nevertheless, as emulsion science has evolved within the food industry, it has incorporated a range of other scientic disciplines, such as sensory science and human physiology, as researchers attempt to correlate organoleptic qualities (such as taste, odor, mouthfeel, and appearance) and biological responses (such as digestion, absorption, and hormone release) to emulsion composition, structure, and physicochemical properties. A particularly notable aspect of modern emulsion research in the food industry is the integration of knowledge from disparate scientic disciplines.
