Nowadays it is believed that food should contribute more and more to helping maintain and improve health. In this context, "functional foods" have been developed, which are added to "traditional" food ingredients. They have different properties such as improving certain bodily functions or reducing the risk of certain diseases (high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease ...)
To add these ingredients in foods poses several technical challenges:
- Maintain the organoleptic qualities of the food (taste, texture, appearance, color ...) so they are unaffected by the characteristics of the additive.
- Ensuring product stability until it reaches its target spot in the digestive tract (especially preventing the action of stomach acid).
- Maintain the ingredient’s properties during the production process, food storage and transport.
In general, encapsulation is the most advanced process available for adding bioactive substances to a matrix, providing a means of "packing, separating and storing" ingredients for later release under controlled conditions. Using Flow Focusing® technology makes it possible to obtain very small particles of uniform size so that the organoleptic properties of the final food product are not modified.
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