SBIR Phase II: Enhancing Stability of Natural Ingredients in Food and Beverages

小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力将是显著改善不稳定的天然食品配料的保质期，并能够在食品和饮料行业感兴趣的大型产品组合中用天然色素取代人造色素。消费者对食品中全天然成分的需求增加了数倍，主要是出于对健康的担忧。尽管消费者需求旺盛，但天然食品色素的传递和稳定性对食品饮料行业构成了巨大挑战。这一挑战是由于天然成分固有的化学不稳定性以及它们在食品加工和储存过程中加速降解造成的。但目前的解决方案成本效益不高，需要使用合成添加剂和防腐剂，而这并不是消费者想要的。该项目旨在提供一系列低成本、稳定的天然成分，以提高食品加工和储存过程中成品的整体稳定性。这也将满足社会对健康食品成分和提高食品可持续性的需求。这项SBIR第二阶段项目旨在开发基于生物的封装解决方案，以改善食品和饮料产品中的天然食品颜色和植物化学稳定性。目前的解决方案是次优的，提供有限的pH(颜色)、热稳定性或氧化稳定性以及食品和饮料产品的短期保质期。为了解决这一未得到满足的需求，该项目旨在开发天然色素和生物活性物质的胶囊，以提高成品食品的整体稳定性。这将通过努力实现该项目的主要目标：选择和筛选待包裹的载体和天然成分，包裹成分的物理化学稳定性测试，放大方法，成品食品/饮料产品的稳定性测试，消费者评估和客户对配方的验证。作为拟议方法的结果，将提供解决方案，使食品和饮料行业能够用天然着色剂取代人工着色剂，并显著延长其所需食品的保质期。这也将使那些在消费中寻找天然促进健康成分的消费者受益。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will be to enable significant improvement in the shelf-life of unstable natural food ingredients and enable replacing artificial with natural colors in a large portfolio of products of interest to the food and beverage industries. Consumer demand for all-natural ingredients in food has increased multifold, primarily due to health concerns. Despite the strong consumer demand, delivery and stability of natural food colors pose a great challenge for the food and beverage industry. This challenge results due to an inherent chemical instability of natural ingredients and due to their accelerated degradation during food processing and storage. But the current solutions are not cost-effective and require the use of synthetic additives and preservatives, which are not desired by the consumers. This project is aimed at providing an array of low-cost, stable natural ingredients that will improve the overall stability of the finished products both during food processing and storage. This will also address the unmet societal needs for healthy food ingredients and improving sustainability of food products.This SBIR Phase II project aims to develop bio-based encapsulation solutions to improve natural food color and phytochemical stability in food and beverage products. Current solutions are sub-optimal providing limited pH (color), heat or oxidative stability and short expiration dates on food and beverage products. To address this unmet need, this project aims to develop encapsulation of natural colors and bioactives that will enhance the overall stability of a finished food product. This will be achieved by working on the primary objectives of this project: Selection and screening of the carriers and natural ingredients to be encapsulated, physico-chemical stability testing of the encapsulated ingredients, scale-up methodologies, stability testing in a finished food/beverage product, consumer evaluation and customer validation of the formulations. As a result of the proposed approach, solutions will be provided that will allow the food and beverage industry to replace artificial with natural colorants as well as significantly extend shelf-life of their desired food products. This will also benefit the consumer who is seeking natural health-promoting ingredients in what he/she consumes.