edible polysaccharides as stabilizers and carriers for the delivery of phenolic compounds and pigments in food formulations

TL;DR

This review explores how edible polysaccharides serve as effective stabilizers and carriers for encapsulating phenolic compounds and pigments, enhancing their stability, bioaccessibility, and bioavailability in food and nutraceutical applications.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of polysaccharides used in microencapsulation, detailing techniques, interactions, and factors influencing encapsulation efficiency and stability.

Findings

Polysaccharides can achieve up to 90% encapsulation efficiency.

Structural interactions like hydrogen bonds and electrostatic forces are key.

Mixtures of polysaccharides improve stability and bioactivity.

Abstract

Food polysaccharides have emerged as suitable carriers of active substances and as additives to food and nutraceutical formulations, showing potential to stabilize bioactive compounds during the storage of microencapsulate preparations, even in the gastrointestinal tract following the intake of bioactive compounds, thereby improving their bioaccessibility and bioavailability. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the main polysaccharides employed as wall materials, including starch, maltodextrin, alginate, pectin, inulin, chitosan, and gum arabic, and discusses how structural interactions and physicochemical properties can benefit the microencapsulation of polyphenols and pigments. The main findings and principles of the major encapsulation techniques, including spray drying, freeze drying, extrusion, emulsification, and coacervation, related to the production of microparticles, were briefly described. Polysaccharides can entrap hydrophilic and hydrophobic compounds by physical interactions, forming a barrier around the nucleus or binding to the bioactive compound. Intermolecular binding between polysaccharides in the wall matrix, polyphenols, and pigments in the nucleus can confer up to 90% of encapsulation efficiency, governed mainly by hydrogen bonds and electrostatic interactions. The mixture of wall polysaccharides in the microparticles synthesis favors the encapsulation solubility, storage stability, bioaccessibility, and bioactivity of the microencapsulate compounds. Clinical trials on the bioefficacy of polyphenols and pigments loaded in polysaccharide microparticles are scarce and require further evidence to reinforce the use of this technology.