Colorful natural ingredients based emulsion gel beads: Establishment, characterization and its promotion on the viability of Lactobacillus plantarum

Four novel colorful C-phycocyanin-pectin (CPC-PE) based emulsion gel beads co-encapsulated with curcumin (Cur), β-carotene (β-Car), capsaicin (Cap) or procyanidins (PAs) were established. It was found that only co-encapsulation of procyanidins could improve the viable count of Lactobacillus plantarum, which was increased from 6.66 to 7.14 log/CFU during the digestion process and from 8.6 to 8.98 log/CFU during the storage process. Firstly, the four colorful emulsions were investigated. Compared with other emulsions, the droplets size of the CPC-PE-PAs emulsion was the lowest, which decreased from 6.5 to 2.5 μm. In addition, the apparent viscosity was the highest and the microstructure of that was the most homogenous. After gel beads formed, it was found that pectin gel beads have more holes and grooves inside the beads. However, the other gel beads are relatively denser and more homogeneous internally. The characteristic diffraction peaks of Cur, Cap, β-Car, and PAs were absent from the XRD spectra of the gel beads, indicating that the four small molecules were completely encapsulated and formed amorphous complexes with the carriers, which helped to stabilize the gel-bead system. These results confirm CPC-PE-procyanidin beads as a groundbreaking naturally colored probiotic delivery system.