The list of compounds that have become targets of encapsulation approaches are steadily growing, and include both compounds that provide “technical” functionalities such as antioxidants, antimicrobials, colours and flavours as well as compounds that exhibit various physiological functionalities such as vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids, polyphenols, or polypeptides. Since the physical properties of these target substances - solubility, partitioning, melting or crystallization temperatures, density, charge, and surface activity to name just a few – may differ vastly, a wide range of different types of encapsulation systems needed to be developed. Not surprisingly, encapsulation systems studies have therefore predominately concentrated on general design principles, manufacturing approaches and stability assessments of the disperse systems. In contrast, the actual use and performance of the generated systems in “real” foods such as meat, dairy and cereal products is rarely the subject of scientific studies. In this presentation, we will highlight that this presents a crucial gap in the knowledge base that can make it exceedingly difficult or even impossible for both small and large scale industries to actually use the laboratory generated results of the scientific community. A few case studies including the use of omega-3 fatty acid carrying emulsions in sausages, the use of antimicrobial carrying emulsions in beverages and the development of a highly concentrated liposomal powder will be presented to demonstrate the reason why this gap still exists and what difficulties one encounters when trying to make encapsulation systems “work” in the real food science world. Approaches to overcome these difficulties such as increased pilot plant capabilities of food science researchers, a better understanding of the matrix properties or real foods, and a thorough analysis of the sequentially applied conditions during processing will be presented. Finally, new tools such as emerging national and transnational Food Science platforms that allow academic and industrial scientist research teams to carry out both precompetitive and competitive research together will be introduced.
Prof. Jochen Weiss j.weiss@uni-hohenheim.de
