Encapsulation of Nutraceuticals in Yoghurt and Beverage Products Using the Ultrasound and High-Pressure Processing Technologies

Abstract

Dairy and beverage products are considered highly nutritious. The increase demand for added nutritional benefits within the food systems consumed by the consumers paves the pathway towards fortifying nutraceuticals into these products. However, nutraceuticals are highly unstable towards harsh processing conditions. In addition, the safety of dairy and beverage products plays a very important role. Therefore, various heat treatments are in practice. As the heat-treated dairy and beverage products tends to illustrate several alterations in their organoleptic characteristics and nutritional properties, the demand for alternative non-thermal processing technologies has increased extensively within the food industry. Ultrasound and high-pressure processing technologies are desirable for this purpose as well as a safe and non-destructive technology towards encapsulation of nutraceuticals into food systems. There are benefits in implementing these two technologies in the production of dairy and beverage products with encapsulants, such as manufacturing high-quality products with improved nutritional value while simultaneously enhancing the sensory characteristics such as flavour, taste, texture, and colour and attaining the microbial quality. The primary objective of this review is to provide detailed information on the encapsulation of nutraceuticals and mechanisms involved with using US and HPP technologies on producing encapsulated yoghurt and beverage products.

Keywords: beverages; encapsulation; high pressure processing (HPP); ultrasound (US); yoghurt.

Figure 1

Sonoporation mechanism occurred during the ultrasound-assisted microbial inactivation process. Reproduced from [36] with permission from Elsevier, 2022.

Figure 2

(A) Contour plots of encapsulation efficiency against sodium caseinate/isolated whey protein, ultrasound power and core to wall ration and (B) Three-dimensional curve of effect of storage time and microcapsule content in yoghurt on release rate of essential oil from microcapsules. Reproduced from [108] with permission from John Wiley and Sons, 2022.