Production of food powders enriched with quercetin-loaded lyophilized liposomes

The natural antioxidant compounds have been increasingly investigated due to the need of the food industry to provide healthier products. Quercetin is a flavonoid, whose benefits are linked mainly with its antioxidant activity. However, this bioactive generally has a low absorption rate in the gastrointestinal tract, which it can be an obstacle for its biological action effective. For this reason, an alternative to improve such bioavailability is to encapsulate quercetina in lipid-based matrices, e.g, liposomes. The liposomes have the capacity to encapsulate both hydrophilic and hydrophobic bioactive, as well as to control the release of the encapsulated bioactives, and enhance their bioavailability. However, there is a need to develop liposome production methods in larger scale, and one of the processes feasible to be scaled up is the ethanol injection method. One of the main objectives of this Thesis was to microencapsulate quercetin in liposomes by ethanol injection method. The dispersion of quercetin-loaded liposomes was lyophilized aiming to increase the stability of liposomes and enrich cornstarch. The enrichment of cornstarch was performed by agglomeration, specifically by high shear method, and the agglomerated food powders were characterized and their physical properties was improved. It was possible to incorporate the enriched cornstarch with quercetin in eggplant sauce, and such application did not change the product characteristics. Also, the eggplant sauce was processed by high hydrostatic pressure and had its stability evaluated, indicating the use of nonthermal technology showed advantages if compared to the conventional thermal processing. (AU)