Encapsulation in the Food Industry: A Brief Historical Overview to Recent Developments

Encapsulation in food industry serves several functions including masking of undesirable color/flavor/taste, preservation of unstable constituents, incorporation of additional functional and nutritional components and site-specific release of encapsulated ingredients at a controlled time and rate. The knowledge of microencapsulation in other sectors like pharmaceutical industry is well advanced; however, more understanding is required to harvest the maximum benefits from food industry. This paper started with highlighting the gradual progress of microencapsulation process in food industry and ended up with some invaluable suggestions for future works. In the body, the paper reviews the major techniques of food encapsulation, choices of coating materials and the performance measurement methods of food encapsulation. Future trends, scopes and aspects of microencapsulation process in food manufacturing sector are also presented as the necessary recommendations for future researches. The article would help the microencapsulated food manufacturers to choose the target oriented encapsulates and suitable encapsulation technique.