Interfacial Rheology and Encapsulation Techniques for the Development of Functional Foods

想象一下，你吃了一顿美味的饭，其中包含了你身体所需的所有卡路里和营养素，让你感到精力充沛和满足，在24、48甚至72小时内都不需要或不想再吃东西。虽然像这样的“控释”食品不会取代常规食品，但它可以大大提高由于身体或环境限制而难以正常饮食的人的生活质量。这些人包括有规律进食困难的儿童和老人、癌症患者、灾难受害者以及宇航员和军事人员等工作环境受限的人。生产这种技术将非常具有挑战性，需要基础科学知识和工程工具的重大进步。这些进步还需要跨越多个研究领域，如生理学，心理学，物理学和工程学。在未来，与其他研究小组的跨学科合作将是必要的，以实现这一目标。然而，开始，这项研究计划将集中在建立两个较小的，但重要的基石，以支持这一目标：1。对乳液和泡沫物理学的基本了解，它们构成了食品生产中最终产品或加工步骤的重要部分。 2.将营养成分封装到食品中以提高营养价值的技术和材料。在这两种情况下，研究将涉及三个主要活动： - 开发新的分析工具 - 应用这些工具促进数学模型的开发和验证 - 与公司建立合作，使用这些工具和模型来帮助产品制定和开发。

Imagine eating a delicious meal that contains all the calories and nutrients that your body needs, and leaves you feeling energetic and satisfied without a need or desire to eat again for 24, 48, or even 72 hours. While a "controlled-release" food product like this would not be intended to replace regular food, it could dramatically improve the quality of life for anyone who has difficulty eating regular meals due to physical or circumstantial limitations. This includes children and elderly people who have difficulty eating regularly, cancer patients, disaster victims, and people with restrictive work environments such as astronauts and military personnel.Producing this technology will be very challenging and will require significant advances in basic scientific knowledge as well as engineering tools. These advances will also need to span multiple fields of research such as physiology, psychology, physics, and engineering. In the future, interdisciplinary collaborations with other research groups will be necessary to achieve this goal. However, to begin, this research program will focus on establishing two smaller, but important building blocks to support this goal: 1. Fundamental understanding of the physics of emulsions and foams, which make up a significant portion of the final products or processing steps in producing food. 2. Techniques and materials for the encapsulation of nutraceutical ingredients into food products for enhancing the nutritional value.In both cases the research will involve three main activities: - Development of new analytical tools - Application of these tools to facilitate the development and validation of mathematical models - Creation of collaborations with companies to use these tools and models to aid in product formulation and development.