Microencapsulation Methods for Food Antioxidants

Antioxidants are important constituents of foods due to their potential to delay or inhibit oxidation, extend the shelf life, and protect the freshness, color, aroma, or textural attributes of the product. In addition, they have several health beneficial effects which attracted the attention of many scientists. Protecting or improving the stability and bioactivity of antioxidants against environmental factors is possible with the encapsulation process. Encapsulation also enables the fortification of foods with antioxidants and improves their bioavailability and bioactivity. Chemical, physical, physicochemical, and biological methods are used in order to encapsulate food antioxidants within appropriate coating materials. Properties of the antioxidative core material and the coating agent, desired microcapsule size, purpose of encapsulation, and further applications are the most important factors that need to be considered for the selection of the appropriate encapsulation technique, besides the application costs and presence of required facilities/infrastructure for the encapsulation process. In order to obtain the most efficient microcapsules with high bioactivity, long retention time and low operational costs, encapsulation methods may either be used individually or two or more methods might be combined. Choosing the best microencapsulation method is a dynamic phenomenon depending on several factors and parameters which are unique for each antioxidant encapsulation case. In this chapter, microencapsulation methods used for the encapsulation of food antioxidants are reviewed.