The Role of Antioxidants and Encapsulation Processes in Omega-3 Stabilization

In the last years the production of functional food systems enriched with omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (ω-3 PUFAs) has gained great interest, not only because of the health benefits attributed especially to eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA; C20: 5 n-3) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA; C22:6 n-3), but also because the imbalanced intake ratio of omega-6/omega-3 in Western diets. However, ω-3 PUFAs are highly prone to lipid oxidation. This is a big drawback since it leads to the loss of their nutritional properties together with the appearance of odor/flavor active compounds and other toxic lipid oxidation products. In this regard, the development of efficient delivery systems (e.g. emulsions or encapsulates) which prevent ω-3 PUFAs oxidation when incorporated to complex food matrices is of great importance. This chapter aims to review the most important advances of the last decade regarding ω-3 PUFAs stabilization techniques, either by chemical means (e.g. addition of antioxidants), physical means (e.g. encapsulation) or both (e.g. ω-3 PUFAs encapsulation in presence of antioxidants) and subsequent addition to food matrices. In addition, the new trends in electrohydrodynamic processing (electrospraying and coaxial electrospraying) in order to produce ω-3 PUFAs-loaded encapsulates are also discussed.