Background

The increased demand by consumers for clean labels has encouraged industry to search for replacements of synthetic ingredients in food products, and in particular, colorants. Lutein, a xanthophyll found in marigolds and corn, can be used in food products as a natural colorant replacing yellow food dyes. Moreover, lutein is considered a nutraceutical due to its potentially beneficial health effects, such as prevention of macular degeneration, role in the development of the visual and nervous systems of fetuses, and its antioxidant properties. However, incorporation of lutein into foods is often limited because of its low-water solubility, chemical instability, and poor oral bioavailability. For this reason, colloidal encapsulation systems have been developed to facilitate the incorporation of lutein into aqueous food and beverage products.

Scope and approach

This review focuses on exploring encapsulation options for lutein using various emulsion-based, nanoparticle- and microparticle-based and molecular inclusion encapsulation systems, as well as additives that can be used to increase its chemical stability in these systems. This review covers all aspects of lutein encapsulation, including both food-grade and pharmaceutical-grade encapsulation systems.

Key findings and conclusions

Though lutein-loaded encapsulation systems are extensively explored in this review, emulsions are of the most interest in industry as they are cost efficient and can be designed to increase the stability of lutein by selecting the proper emulsifiers and emulsification techniques. Despite the extensive amount of research carried out on the encapsulation of hydrophobic bioactive molecules such as lutein, there are still opportunities to develop encapsulation systems that further protect these molecules during storage and also increase their bioavailability after ingestion.

中文翻译：

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叶黄素包封系统：综述

背景

消费者对清洁标签的需求增加，已经促使工业界寻求替代食品，特别是着色剂中合成成分的方法。叶黄素是一种在万寿菊和玉米中发现的叶黄素，可在食品中用作天然着色剂，代替黄色食用染料。此外，叶黄素被认为是一种营养保健品，因为它具有潜在的有益健康作用，例如预防黄斑变性，在胎儿视觉和神经系统发育中的作用及其抗氧化特性。然而，由于叶黄素的低水溶性，化学不稳定性和不良的口服生物利用度，通常将叶黄素掺入食品中受到限制。由于这个原因，已经开发了胶体包封系统以促进叶黄素掺入含水食品和饮料产品中。

范围和方法

这篇综述着重探讨了使用各种基于乳液，基于纳米和基于微粒以及分子包含物的包封系统以及可用于增加其在这些系统中的化学稳定性的添加剂，探索叶黄素的包封选项。这篇综述涵盖了叶黄素封装的所有方面，包括食品级和药物级封装系统。

主要发现和结论

尽管在此综述中广泛研究了叶黄素负载的包封系统，但由于乳液具有成本效益，并且可以通过选择合适的乳化剂和乳化技术来提高叶黄素的稳定性，因此乳液在工业上是最受关注的。尽管对疏水性生物活性分子（如叶黄素）的封装进行了大量研究，但仍有机会开发出可以在存储过程中进一步保护这些分子并在摄入后增加其生物利用度的封装系统。