School of Agriculture & Food, Faculty of Veterinary & Agricultural Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia.
Institute of Food Science and Technology, Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Dhaka, 1205, Bangladesh.
J Food Sci. 2021 May;86(5):1629-1641. doi: 10.1111/1750-3841.15695. Epub 2021 Apr 6.
Chocolates can be formulated as a functional food via enrichment with probiotics. However, the added probiotics must overcome the challenges of processing and storage conditions and the harsh gastrointestinal environment. The study aimed to overcome these challenges using two different formulations of cocoa powder as alternative encapsulants along with Na-alginate (A ) and Na-alginate and fructooligosaccharides (A ). Seven different probiotic strains were encapsulated individually using the new formulations and viabilities of these encapsulated probiotics were assessed prior to and after they were added to chocolates. The highest achieved encapsulation efficiencies were 93.40% for formulation A (with Lactobacillus casei) and 95.36% for formulation A (with Lactobacillus acidophilus La5). The encapsulated probiotics with the new formulations maintained higher viability than the recommended therapeutic level (10 colony forming unit [CFU]/g) for up to 180 and 120 days of storage at 4 and 25 °C, respectively. The tested encapsulants improved probiotics survival when subjected to thermal stress and maintained about 9.0 Logs CFU/g at 60 °C. Additionally, the viable numbers of probiotics in fortified chocolates showed higher than 7 Logs CFU/g after 90 days of storage at 25 °C. Both formulations exhibited significantly (P < 0.05) high survivability of probiotics (8.0 Logs CFU/g) during the in vitro gastrointestinal digestion. This study demonstrated that cocoa powder along with Na-alginate and FOS has the potential to be used as a probiotic encapsulating material, and chocolates could be an excellent carrier for the development of healthy probiotic chocolate products. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: The introduction of cocoa powder as an effective encapsulating agent to deliver probiotics could help the chocolate industry to develop healthy and attractive functional snacks for health-conscious consumers.
巧克力可通过添加益生菌来制成功能性食品。然而，添加的益生菌必须克服加工和储存条件以及恶劣的胃肠道环境带来的挑战。本研究旨在使用两种不同的可可粉配方作为替代包埋剂，与海藻酸钠（A）和海藻酸钠与低聚果糖（A）一起克服这些挑战。将七种不同的益生菌菌株分别用新配方包埋，在添加到巧克力之前和之后评估这些包埋益生菌的存活率。配方 A（含干酪乳杆菌）的最高包埋效率为 93.40%，配方 A（含嗜酸乳杆菌 La5）的最高包埋效率为 95.36%。用新配方包埋的益生菌在 4°C 和 25°C 下储存 180 天和 120 天时，存活率均保持在建议的治疗水平（10 菌落形成单位[CFU]/g）以上。当受到热应激时，测试的包埋剂提高了益生菌的存活率，在 60°C 下仍能保持约 9.0 Logs CFU/g。此外，在 25°C 下储存 90 天后，强化巧克力中的益生菌活菌数仍高于 7 Logs CFU/g。两种配方在体外胃肠道消化过程中均表现出益生菌（8.0 Logs CFU/g）具有显著（P < 0.05）的高存活率。本研究表明，可可粉与海藻酸钠和 FOS 结合具有作为益生菌包埋材料的潜力，巧克力可以作为开发健康益生菌巧克力产品的优秀载体。
将可可粉作为一种有效的包埋剂来输送益生菌，可以帮助巧克力行业为注重健康的消费者开发健康且有吸引力的功能性零食。
