Encapsulation:- an essential technology for functional food

applications

By Denis Poncelet, ENITIAA, UMR CNRS 6144, 44322 Nantes cedex,

France
poncelet@enitiaa-nantes.fr

Since the last world war more than 60 years ago, we assisted in a
revolution on the improvement of production methods leading to an
abundance of food in our occidental countries unknown to mankind before.
Our fridge is full! This abundance is also associated with a diversification
of the foodstuffs. Some products formerly considered as "luxury" find their
place in our quasi daily food (salmon, duck fillet …); fruits and vegetables
reach us from all over the world.

The abundance has driven people to request more from the food they eat
over and above energy supply; for example, to provide safety, health, and
why not--- fun.

‘Food mutation’
However, there is another equally important revolution in our society.
From traditional and familial "cuisine", we have moved to industrial
cooking, to consume as catering (fast food) or to bring back home.
Recomposed powders, mixes, storage period extension, and the need for
innovation have fundamentally modified the handling foodstuffs. It is
simpler and less costly for industry to transport, store and rehydrate dried
powders than to transport hydrated food products. Unfortunately,
dehydratation often has negative effects on the texture, flavour and
solubility of the rehydrated food. It is frequently necessary to supply food
powders with their inherent aromas, vitamins, and other properties. In
this context and application microencapsulation has become a highly
important tool for food process engineers. Protection during storage or
processing, released at the right time and place (e.g. during cooking), the
encapsulated additive will provide all its potential to the food.

Vitamin A
Vitamin is deficient in Asian foods and has to be supplied. The initial
proposal was to incorporate vitamin A into glutamate, a taste enhancer
used in these countries. However, Vitamin A is yellow and turns brown on
oxidation while glutamate salt must be white to be appreciated by
customers. Coating Place (USA) has developed a process for coating
particles of vitamin A, colorizing them in white, while offering protection
against oxygen, humidity and light.

Pro- and prebiotics

Traditional foods contain many different bacteria beneficial for health.
However, the pasteurization and long-term storage leads to food with a
reduced concentration of these bacteria. It was then proposed to
supplement food with selected health-support bacteria, i.e. probiotics.
However, the most efficient ones are generally fragile cells and need
protection, for example, by microencapsulation. In the frame of a
European project (MEPPHAC), we have demonstrated that coating
probiotics can enhance their survival by a factor 20 during warm pellet
extrusion. Microencapsulation allows the mixing of probiotics with
materials promoting their growth and attachment in the intestine (i.e.
prebiotics). It is then possible to develop optimum cocktails of probiotics
and prebiotics in a single formulation called synbiotics.

Spices and herbs

Aromas, spices and herbs constitute the core of pleasure-linked cuisine
and eating. However, they also represent the first natural functional foods.
They interact with the other food ingredients during storage, freezing, and
pre-cooking resulting, sometimes, in off flavours and loss of health
potential properties. Microencapsulation protects them during these stages
while releasing them, for example, during cooking. Microencapsulation
offers, therefore, a unique approach for maintaining optimum quality and
nutritive status in a range of foodstuffs.

New properties and functions

Encapsulation is a performing tool that confers new properties to normal
materials. Obtaining a stable functional ingredient is inadequate if it
cannot be easily integrated in the food.

Many vitamins, plant extracts and unsaturated acids are hydrophobic and
dispersing them in hydrophilic food powders is a real challenge. In
addition to protecting them, microencapsulation allows their conversion to
suitable and managable powders. Similary, by encapsulation, brown sugar
can be converted to a free flowing powder, suspended with hydrophobic
vitamins in juice, or dispersed in cocoa or in cold milk.

Unsaturated fatty acids are recognized as beneficial for health. However,

they sometimes have an unpleasant taste, which can become
unacceptable when they are oxidized. Encapsulation largely overcomes
this problem by taste masking. Moreover, incorporating flavours in the
coating helps to make the functional food pleasant to consume. This is
application is used extensively in pet food supply as animals will refuse
off-flavored ingredients.

Functional food ingredients may be incorporated into food or may be

consumed independently as pills or fine powder. This does not require a
prescription from a doctor. However, consumers must be advised to limit
their daily dose. This can be assisted by coating particles with a colouring
material thus differentiating the nutraceutics from a drug or a food.

Listeria represents a high risk in processed meat. We have developed an

encapsulation system consisting in a core containing two substrates
(glucose and thiocyanate), coated with two enzymes, and then protection
polymers. In the dry form, the mix is stable for long periods, but on
contact with moisture releases an end-product with high bacteriostatic
properties against listeria.

Innovation tool
Encapsulation can also be used as a tool for innovation. For example,
Orbitz (Canada) sells a drink containing a suspension of coloured capsules
containing different aromas and/or some vitamins, thus making functional
food consumption a ‘fun experience’. Salvona (USA) has developed
encapsulation technologies allowing sequential release of aromas and
sensory ingredients in functional foods.

Finally, microencapsulation can be used as a biocatalyst immobilization

system to process food in a safer and more efficient manner. For example,
reduction of ripening time and increased shelf life of cheese by processing
with an encapsulated enzyme.

The number of applications for microencapsulation technologies in foods,

and especially functional food, is increasing. However, many challenges
still remain. For example, incorporation of water sensitive ingredients in
high moisture foods is not solved because most capsules impermeable to
water are not soft and will be detected by consumers. In January 2008,
BRG (see below) organized a workshop in Switzerland on flavour
encapsulation. A consensus between the one hundred participants was
that 83% of applications relate to one single technology (spray drying)
and so there is a need for innovation.

Developing encapsulated functional foods

The principle of most technologies of encapsulation is quite simple:

 Active ingredient is mixed within a polymer solution; dispersed as
 fine droplets (spraying, dripping, emulsification); droplets solidified
by gelation; drying; cooling; coacervation …
 Or, when a solid powder, particles are mixed in a fluid bed or a
pan; coating solution spray applied to them; solidify by drying or
cooling.
However, several constraints make the development of the encapsulation
process difficult. Firstly, encapsulation is an extra cost, which has to be
minimized. This applies to materials used to build the capsules but also to
equipment or processing conditions. We have computed that continuous
coating processes reduce the running cost by a factor 3 in comparison to
equivalent batch processes.

Materials used for encapsulation in the food domain are very limited
(some polysaccharides, a few lipids…). In pharmaceutical industries,
despite the strict rules to be respected for approval, they have access to
many more materials. In food, the engineer has to play finely with the
formulation to achieve adequate properties in the membrane of the
coating.

Most functional ingredients are sensible to water, oxygen, light and

temperature. Materials must, therefore, offer barriers to water
(hydrophilic) and oxygen. Careful temperature control during processing is
a major requirement. Moving from the so-called Wurster coating process
to a spouted bed process reduces temperature gradients (15ºC) in the
reactor, thus increasing probiotic surviving by a factor two.

Developing an encapsulated product is, therefore, a challenge, requiring a

multi-disciplinary and integrated approach. Many encapsulation
technologies currently exist, but many of are still at the development
stage. Finding the most suitable partners for such development and
production is a hard task.
Finding support for developing encapsulated functional foods
Fortunately, the scientific and industrial community are organizing
themselves in this regard. The Bioencapsulation Research Group (BRG)
(http://bioencapsulation.net) is probably one of the largest non-profit
associations on applied microencapsulation with 2000 members over 80
countries. It organizes conferences, industrial workshops and provides
information through its web site and news. Its next international
conference (http://bioencapsulation.net/XVI_ICB) will take place in Dublin
in September 2008. BRG will organize in the beginning of 2009 the largest
industrial symposium and trade fair in the encapsulation field. The COST
865 programme/project (http://COST865.bioencapsulation.net) is a
European platform for exchanges between researchers and industrialists
on developing collaborative projects in the microencapsulation area and
for publishing thematic books on encapsulation.