A review of microencapsulation methods for food antioxidants: Principles, advantages, drawbacks and applications

Abstract Bioactivities and numerous health benefits against a number of oxidative stress related diseases have been attributed to the role of dietary antioxidants. The development of physical (spray drying, lyophilization, supercritical fluid precipitation and solvent evaporation), physico-chemical (coacervation, liposomes and ionic gelation) and chemical encapsulation techniques (interfacial polymerization and molecular inclusion complexation) enable to obtain healthier and acceptable bioactive compounds. This review focuses on the impacts of microencapsulation techniques on the encapsulation characteristics of food antioxidants. Additionally, this study also provides detailed information on the principles, effective parameters, advantages, disadvantages and applications of microencapsulation techniques.