Food & Beverages

Biography

Biography: Yoav D Livney

Abstract

The enrichment of clear beverages with hydrophobic nutraceuticals is a tough challenge, but an important one to overcome. This is because water and popular soft drinks are consumed by practically everyone, and hence may serve as excellent platforms for improving public health by providing essential micronutrient and health-promoting agents as a mean of preventive medicine. The challenge comprises multiple elements: poor aqueous solubility of the hydrophobic nutraceuticals, high sensitivity to deterioration by oxidation and other chemical and physical factors, adverse sensory properties of certain nutraceuticals, high costs of the bioactive and of the solubilization/encapsulation materials used, processing, storage and shipment conditions limitations, regulatory hurdles including strict limitations on health claims, and on novel ingredients and technologies, religious constraints (Kosher, Halal), allergenicity of certain encapsulating materials, consumer demand for label friendly ingredients (“all natural ingredients”),poor bioavailability of certain hydrophobic nutraceuticals, and more. Over the last decade we have developed a series of novel technologies for nanoencapsulation of hydrophobic nutraceuticals using natural biopolymersin nature-inspired approaches, with great emphasis on enrichment of clear beverage systems. The talk will provide an overview the main technologies we have introduced and studied, including: beta lactoglobulin (-lg)-polysaccharide electrostatic nanocomplexes, Thermally treated -lg-EGCG nanoparticles, beta casein (-CN) micelles, beta-conglycinin (-Cg) nanoparticles, self-assembling Maillard reaction conjugates, hydrophobin co-assemblies, and lately, new plant-protein-based nanoparticles.