Abstract
Nutraceuticals, functional foods, immunity boosters, microcapsules, nanoemulsions, edible packaging, and safe food are the new progressive terms, adopted to describe the food industry. Also, the rising awareness among the consumers regarding these has created an opportunity for the food manufacturers and scientists worldwide to use food as a delivery vehicle. Packaging performs a very imminent role in the food supply chain as well as it is a consequential part of the process of food manufacturing. Edible packaging is a swiftly emerging art of science in which edible biopolymers like lipids, polysaccharides, proteins, resins, etc. and other consumable constituents extracted from various non-conventional sources like microorganisms are used alone or imbibed together. These edible packaging are indispensable and are meant to be consumed with the food. This shift in paradigm from traditional food packaging to edible, environment friendly, delivery vehicles for bioactive compounds have opened new avenues for the packaging industry. Bioactive compounds imbibed in food systems are gradually degenerated, or may change their properties due to internal or external factors like oxidation reactions, or they may react with each other thus reducing their bioavailability and ultimately may result in unacceptable color or flavor. A combination of novel edible food-packaging material and innovative technologies can serve as an excellent medium to control the bioavailability of these compounds in food matrices. One promising technology for overcoming the aforesaid problems is encapsulation. It can be used as a method for entrapment of desirable flavors, probiotics, or other additives in order to apprehend the impediments of the conventional edible packaging. This review explains the concept of encapsulation by exploring various encapsulating materials and their potential role in augmenting the performance of edible coatings/films. The techniques, characteristics, applications, scope, and thrust areas for research in encapsulation are discussed in detail with focus on development of sustainable edible packaging.
Highlights
The food industry and allied sectors like food-packaging industry and nutraceutical industry, face complex challenges on a regular basis due to change in production practices and consumer preferences
Curcumin is a strong hydrophobic molecule; it inhibits the interaction of water with the film matrix, lowering water vapor permeability and solubility. These findings show that the film properties are strongly dependent on the nature and properties of encapsulated bioactive compounds, as well as the compatibility of both the encapsulating and film-forming materials with bioactive compounds (Nieto-Suaza et al, 2019)
C-Phycocyanin, a phycobiliprotein used in food industry as a natural dye, therapeutics, biomarkers, pharmaceuticals, and healthy food, when microencapsulated with extrusion dripping technique was found to have a slow degradation at higher temperature with improved stability and shelf life (Pradeep and Nayak, 2019)
Summary
The food industry and allied sectors like food-packaging industry and nutraceutical industry, face complex challenges on a regular basis due to change in production practices and consumer preferences. Enhanced functionality of the edible film due to encapsulation technology can be attributed to the entrapment of active ingredient in the wall materials (solid, liquid, or gas) which form the matrix (Boostani and Jafari, 2021). It can be exploited as means of active packaging if incorporated in edible films where encapsulant is the matrix material and bioactive is the functional component. Restricted release of bioactives in edible films endorses reproducibility, maneuverability, and predictability of rate of release (Chen et al., FIGURE 2 | Mechanisms for the release of active ingredient from the edible films/coatings into the desired food product (Adapted from Boostani and Jafari, 2021).
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