Encapsulation of Bioactive Ingredients by Extrusion with Vibrating Technology: Advantages and Challenges

Bioactive ingredients are present in functional foods and provide benefits to consumer health. However, for these compounds to be effective in the human organism, their bioactive features must be preserved during food processing and uptake by the organism. An effective technology to maintain bioactivity is encapsulation, which uses a coating material to protect bioactive ingredients. Not all encapsulation techniques are suitable for the effective protection of bioactive ingredients due to stages in the technique that might damage the bioactivity of the encapsulated ingredient. However, extrusion with vibrating technology has proven to be a technique with simple stages, thus enabling the formation of resistant microcapsules and maintaining the bioactivity of the encapsulated material. The aim of this revision is to show the state of the art on protection of bioactive ingredients using the encapsulation process by extrusion with vibrating technology. Therefore, the characteristics of vibrating technology in encapsulation by extrusion shall be addressed as well as the wall materials used, highlighting the features of the microcapsules obtained. For that, recent studies that have used the method in question specifically to protect bioactive ingredients will be discussed. Vibrating technology associated with extrusion, combined with a previous determination of parameters of suitable equipment and wall materials, allows for obtaining homogenous-sized and shaped microcapsules which provide effective protection to the bioactive compound.