Obesity is a serious and increasing health problem, which is considered to be strongly associated with chronic metabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (Han & Lean, 2016).The fundamental feature of obesity is the extreme disequilibrium between energy uptake and expenditure, leading to abnormal excessive growth of adipose tissue (Lin & Lin-Shiau, 2006). Growing evidence suggests that the typical characteristic of obesity is lowgrade chronic inflammation, which may trigger a cascade of detrimental health consequences such as insulin resistance, T2DM, and dyslipidemia (Masoodi et al., 2015).Gut microbiota has been documented to play a critical role in systemic metabolism by modulating energy harvest, fat storage, and immune response of its host (Nicholson et al., 2012;Shen et al., 2013). Recently, it has been increasingly recognized that gut microbiota plays an important role in the pathogenesis of obesity

In this study, Tartary buckwheat starch was modified to different degrees of substitution (DS) with octenyl succinate anhydride (OS-TBS) in order to explore its potential for stabilizing Pickering nanoemulsions. OS-TBS was prepared by reacting Tartary buckwheat starch with 3, 5 or 7% (w/v) octenyl succinate in an alkaline aqueous solution at pH 8.5. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy gave peaks at 1726 cm−1 (C=O) and 1573 cm−1 (RCOO−), indicating the formation of OS-TBS. We further studied the physicochemical properties of the modified starch as well as its emulsification capacity. As the DS with octenyl succinate anhydride increased, the amylose content and gelatinization temperature of the OS-TBS decreased, while its solubility increased. In contrast to the original Tartary buckwheat starch, OS-TBS showed higher surface hydrophobicity, and its particles were more uniform in size and its emulsification stability was better. Higher DS with octenyl succinate led to better emulsification. OS-TBS efficiently stabilized O/W Pickering nanoemulsions and the average particle size of the emulsion was maintained at 300–400 nm for nanodroplets. Taken together, these results suggest that OS-TBS might serve as an excellent stabilizer for nanoscale Pickering emulsions. This study may suggest and expand the use of Tartary buckwheat starch in nanoscale Pickering emulsions in various industrial processes.