Encapsulation of high oleic palm oil using microfluidization and electrospinning: physicochemical characterization and nanotoxicity performance

Abstract

Colombia is one of the leaders of palm oil production with 540,688 hectares harvested in 2019 (Fedepalma, 2019b), and a yield of 3.8 oil tons per hectare achieved in 2017 (overcoming the world average). Despite this, only 42% was sold to produce biodiesel and the 0.1% for oil and fat industry (Fedepalma, 2019a), contributing in a 9% to the gross domestic product (PIB, according to its Spanish abbreviation) of the country in 2018 (Fedepalma, 2018). The palm oil is an edible vegetable oil, which is extracted from mesocarp of several palm species with an orange-red color due to the presence of carotenoids (Marangoni et al., 2015). Currently a hybrid between Elaeis Guinensis and Oleifera has been widely harvested which produces an oil with high concentration of oleic acid (55%) compared to 41% from traditional palm oil (Mozzon et al., 2013). Therefore, it is known as high oleic palm oil (HOPO). The HOPO has showed to be ‘the tropical oil equivalent of olive oil’ due to several authors have reported similar effect on plasma lipids, for this oil and extra virgin olive oil (Lucci et al., 2016). Likewise, the antioxidant capacity of human plasma increased significantly after 3 months of supplementation with HOPO (Ojeda et al., 2017). For this reason, using this oil in final edible products could enhance the quality of nutrition in Colombia, for its high concentrations of vitamin E, beta-carotene, and high unsaturated fatty acids that could be supplied. However, those labile compounds are typically lost during food processing. Hence, to assure a high concentration not only in the product, but also after the intake, encapsulation has been proposed as protection technique.