PHYSICOCHEMICAL AND HEDONIC RESPONSE OF BARS ENRICHED WITH ENCAPSULATED FISH AND FLAXSEED OIL.

There has been a great upsurge in research era for use of natural medicines for good health and wellbeing. In this scenario, omega-3 fatty acid derived from natural sources have imperative health potential but are at great risk for use in food due to its high unsaturation and susceptibility for oxidation. To cope with this challenge, present research work has been designed to preserve these therapeutic moieties through microencapsulation. The resultant encapsulated bio actives were utilized to produce omega-3 enriched bars, which provide an efficient vehicle for delivery of useful entities in the form of snack foods. This study aims at investigating the capability of microencapsulation to prevent lipid oxidation in bars enriched with encapsulates of fish and flaxseed oil as well as to evaluate whether addition of encapsulates influenced sensory and physicochemical characteristics of the bars during storage period of 60 days. The addition of fish and flaxseed microcapsules influenced the physical attributes like color, flavor, texture, chroma and hue angle of prepared omega-3 bars significantly. The rise in concentration of microcapsules raised CIELab values except for b*, which was highest in bars enriched with fish microcapsules and lower in bars incorporated with flaxseed encapsulates, yellow color of fish oil probably contributed to this behavior which although was encapsulated but during processing imparted some color leached from the microcapsules. The L* value demonstrate lightness that was more in flaxseed oil enriched bars whereas, a* showed declining trend with increased concentration of added encapsulates in both type of encapsulated bars probably due to some grayish color imparted by encapsulated gum Arabic moiety. The formulation with 5% concentration of both powders i.e. fish and flaxseed encapsulate imparted higher oxidative stability and sensory score. However, it is revealed that omega-3 bars with all combinations were acceptable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]