No abstract

Many nutritional experts and food scientists are interested in developing functional foods containing bioactive agents and many of these health-promoting ingredients may benefit from nano/micro-encapsulation technology. Encapsulation has been proven useful to improve the physical and the chemical stability of bioactive agents, as well as their bioavailability and efficacy, enabling their incorporation into a wide range of formulations aimed to functional food production. There are several reviews concerning nano/micro-encapsulation techniques, but none are focused on the incorporation of the bioactive agents into food matrices. The aim of this paper was to investigate the development of microencapsulated food, taking into account the different bioactive ingredients, the variety of processes, techniques and coating materials that can be used for this purpose.

Fresh strawberry fruit is highly susceptible to damage during mechanical handlings. To prevent fruit macro-damage from external forces and predict damage evolution in internal tissues, the textural failure mechanics of strawberry fruit and its tissues were characterized by loading-unloading tests at different compression speeds. Strawberry fruit showed expected three stages of deformation during the loading phase, namely elastic, local plastic and structural failure deformation. Their cutoff points depended on the compression speed and loading direction, which was validated further by the corresponding visible browning processes in tissues from fruit longitudinal equatorial section. The peak force and absorbed energy depended on the loading direction and compression speed while the percentage of damaged mass only depended on the loading direction. The fruit was most susceptible to mechanical damage when it was compressed along its stem-blossom axis at low percentage deformation and along its radial axis at high percentage deformation. The absorbed energy and percentage of damaged mass of the strawberry fruit was correlated, which suggested that the absorbed energy could be an appropriate and easily measurable mechanical parameter for quantitatively assessing the degree of fruit damage. The failure stress, failure energy and elastic modulus of fruit tissues increased with the compression speed, while this factor did not affect the failure strain. The average failure stress, failure strain, failure energy and elastic modulus of fruit inner tissue were 0.093

When developing low‐fat foods, one of the main concerns is the sensory performance which is generally inferior to that of the full‐fat version. Micron‐sized air cells coated and stabilised by proteins (0.5–10 µm) have been produced sonochemically using different cysteine‐rich proteins (hydrophobin, bovine serum albumin [BSA] and egg white proteins [EWPs]). These suspensions of air cells have been termed “air filled emulsions” (AFEs) and suggested for the production of low‐fat emulsion‐based products. This study explores the oral (tribological) behavior of AFEs as ingredients and within a triphasic A/O/W emulsion‐based prototype salad dressing. Tribological measurement of AFEs yielded different results for BSA‐AFE and EWP‐AFE, indicating that the very nature of the protein may play a crucial role. However, the triphasic A/O/W emulsion showed similar, if not better, lubrication properties than the standard O/W version, indicating that AFEs may contribute to the perceived fat‐related attributes. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS The tribological behavior of a material has been postulated as relevant for its in‐mouth perception, especially when considering fat‐related attributes. The present study deals with tribological study of novel air‐based ingredients. Knowing the tribological/lubrication behavior of these ingredients and their subsequent products could be useful for better understanding of their possible behavior in the mouth. Also, this could assist in redesigning ingredients and formulations with better sensory performance.

Microbubbles have the potential to be used in many applications in different fields, especially in food, biomedical, and environmental sciences. However, to produce microbubbles with relatively long-term stability is difficult as they are inherently unstable entities. Hydrophobins are naturally occurring proteins that have previously been shown to have an ability to stabilize micron-sized air cells. More recently, small air cells with other cysteine-rich proteins such as bovine serum albumin and egg albumen (egg white protein) have been constructed using a sonochemical method. The majority of the air cells had a diameter between 1 and 10 μm. A dependence of the air cell size and stability with the processing conditions and concentration were found. The air cells’ shells are dense enough to form a cage-like structure around air cells and are equally as robust as those from hydrophobins.