Development and application of ionic liquids derived from bioactive and natural compounds as functional additives and nutraceuticals for the food industry

Abstract

In the last decade, conscious food consumption has revolutionized the food industry. Thus, healthy products from natural sources have gained market over traditional products and represent the trend of the food and beverage market in Brazil and worldwide. One of the major challenges facing the food industry nowadays is providing additives and offering products that fit the concepts of naturalness and functionality and promote health, safety, sustainability and well-being. These demands are still latent due to the lack of established alternatives to substitute hazardous agrochemicals, traditional emulsifiers and preservatives with limited use and additives derived from toxic products or without any nutritional appeal. The development of functional additives or ingredients in the Ionic Liquid (IL) form from natural bioactive compounds could be a technological solution to one of the food industry's greatest challenges, since they can preserve and combine the functional properties of their bioactive precursors to produce safe products with high nutritional value, and enable the adjustment and improvement of their physical and bioactive properties for an application of interest. Therefore, the main objective of this project is to develop and apply ILs as new dual functional emulsifiers and antimicrobial preservatives for the food industry, obtained from bioactive compounds of commercial interest, in order to enable new safe and sustainable additives with nutritional appeal, and to develop new nutraceuticals in the IL form in order to obtain new functional compounds with higher bioavailability. (AU)