Abstract
The development of functional foods containing probiotic bacteria has become increasingly relevant to improve and maintain health. However, this is often limited to dairy food matrices given the complexity involved in maintaining a stable system together with high microbial viability in matrices such as juices. The objective of this study was to develop and characterize sodium alginate capsules loaded with Lactobacillus gasseri ATCC® 19992 ™ (LG). Cell viability under in vitro gastrointestinal conditions and during storage in apple juice were evaluated. The capsules were prepared by ionic gelation and an emulsification process was performed as pretreatment using two homogenization methods: magnetic stirring (AM) and Ultraturrax® rotor-stator homogenizer (UT). Cell viability after encapsulation was similar in the two processes: 65%. At the end of the in vitro gastrointestinal evaluation, the non-encapsulated probiotic cells did not show any viability, while the AM system was able to retain 100% of its viability and the UT retained 79.14%. The morphology of the capsules consisted of a continuous and homogeneous surface. Cell viability of LG encapsulated in apple juice stored at 4 °C for 21 days was 77% for AM, 55.43% for UT, and 63.10% for free LG.
Highlights
A functional food can be defined as one that provides beneficial effects to the human body, in addition to its basic nutritional properties
It is suggested that the addition of oil to the encapsulating matrix improves the morphology of the capsules in addition to enhance cell viability possibly through the presence of fatty acids in the vegetable oil and in Tween that increase cell survival under stress conditions [39,40], compared to the systems reported in the literature of encapsulation in a mixture of alginate alone [30,41], so the use of an emulsion suggests an advantage in the encapsulation of bacteria
Favorable results were obtained by encapsulating L. gasseri with ALG and carrying out an emulsification process as pretreatment (AM and Ultraturrax® rotor-stator homogenizer (UT))
Summary
A functional food can be defined as one that provides beneficial effects to the human body, in addition to its basic nutritional properties. The range of formulations and designs of these foods is broad and comprises from bioactive compounds to microorganisms One of the latter functional components that have attracted attention are lactic acid bacteria (LAB) [4], due to their probiotic role. For probiotics to have a beneficial effect after administration, they must be in a concentration of 9–11 log CFU/day [6]; it is generally accepted that probiotic products should have a 6-8 log CFU/g [7]. Such concentration is the one applied in functional products
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