Vitamin-packed particles could help make food more nutritious
Date: 14.12.2022
Getting enough vitamins in your day can be tricky, but a new technique could help fortify everyday foods to tackle deficiencies. Scientists at MIT added vitamin A, encased in polymer capsules, to ingredients like flour and found that it survived storage and cooking to deliver the nutrient in useful amounts to the body.
Vitamin A deficiency can lead to issues with the immune system and potentially cause blindness in children. While it can be added to foods, it doesn’t last as long in a loose form, meaning that by the time someone eats it the benefits are negligible. The MIT team set out to develop a way to protect the vitamin long enough to make it a worthwhile additive.
“Vitamin A is a very important micronutrient, but it’s an unstable molecule,” said Ana Jaklenec, senior author of the study. “We wanted to see if our encapsulated vitamin A could fortify a food vehicle like bouillon cubes or flour, throughout storage and cooking, and whether the vitamin A could remain biologically active and be absorbed.”
The key to the idea is a polymer called BMC, which the team has experimented with in the past for encapsulating nutrients. It’s already approved by the FDA for use in coating drugs and supplements, and is regarded as safe.
The team mixed vitamin A with BMC to form particles 100 to 200 microns wide, and coated them in starch to keep them from sticking together. In tests, the encapsulated vitamin A survived better than free vitamin A when exposed to intense UV light, high temperatures and boiling water.
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