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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Albany, California » Western Regional Research Center » Healthy Processed Foods Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #334382
Research Project: Adding Value to Plant-Based Waste Materials through Development of Novel, Healthy Ingredients and Functional Foods

Location: Healthy Processed Foods Research

Title: Preparation of stable Pickering emulsions with short, medium and long chain fats and starch nanocrystals and their in vitro digestion properties

Author
item LIANG, RONG - Jiangnan University
item JIANG, YANWEI - Jiangnan University
item Yokoyama, Wallace - Wally
item YANG, CHENG - Jiangnan University
item CAO, GUANGQUN - Jiangnan University
item ZHONG, FANG - Jiangnan University

Submitted to: RSC Advances
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/12/2016
Publication Date: 10/13/2016
Citation: Liang, R., Jiang, Y., Yokoyama, W.H., Yang, C., Cao, G., Zhong, F. 2016. Preparation of stable Pickering emulsions with short, medium and long chain fats and starch nanocrystals and their in vitro digestion properties. RSC Advances. 6:99496-99504. doi: 10.1039/C6RA18468E.

Interpretive Summary: Emulsions are used to in foods and industry to uniformly disperse fats in water or other aqueous matrix. Surfactants are necessary to stabilize emulsions and synthetic chemicals are often used. Emulsions can also be stabilized by particles (Pickering emulsions) instead of chemical surfactants. The smaller the particle the better the stability of the emulsion. Nano-particles were produced from corn starch and used to stabilize fats with different fatty acid compositions. The stability of the particles depended on both the amount of starch nanoparticles and the type of fat.

Technical Abstract: Pickering emulsions are receiving more attention as delivery systems in food and pharmaceuticals because they can be formulated with nontoxic food ingredients to form stable emulsions. In this study, 40-100 nm starch nanocrystals (SNCs) prepared from acid hydrolysis of waxy maize starches were used as food-grade particle emulsifiers, to stabilize typical edible oils with three different chain lengths of fatty acids: short, medium and long chain triacylglycerols (SCT, MCT and LCT, respectively). SNC concentrations increases from 0.1 to 1.0 wt.%, decreased the droplet size of these three Pickering emulsions. At 1.0% SNC concentration, these three emulsions were stable against Ostwald ripening (for SCT) and coalescence (for MCT and LCT) for 90 days at 25 °C. The in vitro digestion properties of these three emulsions were significantly different. The rate of lipid digestion increased in the order LCT < MCT < SCT, whereas the percentage of SNC digested decreased in the order LCT > MCT > SCT. The inverse relationship between triglyceride and SNCs hydrolysis rates may be due to the displacement of SNCs from the interface by bile salts with shrinking droplet size and calcium ions in digesta may precipitate the displaced SNCs and reduce digestibility. These results provide information about the diverse physical and digestive properties of SNC stabilized food-grade Pickering emulsions containing fats of different chain length triglycerides.