Gastrointestinal digestion of sunflower seed oil bodies

Oil bodies isolated from sunflower seed (Helianthus annuus) are enriched in nutrients such as tocopherol (vitamin E) and essential fatty acids. Therefore oil bodies suspended in aqueous media are a natural emulsion that may represent a vehicle to deliver natural nutrition, stable, pre-emulsified oil into appropriate food systems. The aim of this work was to determine the effect of gastrointestinal conditions, over time, on the physico-chemical nature of oil bodies, and so to deduce their profile of digestion compared with equivalent processed emulsions. The digestibility of oil body emulsions compared with protein enriched emulsions and other processed emulsions has been studied. In order to obtain high quality oil bodies, a new extraction protocol was developed. Oil bodies isolated with this new protocol have a size and properties comparable to what is reported in the literature which is ~ 1 to 2 urn, For in-vitro digestion experiments, crude oil bodies (COB), washed oil bodies (WOB), whey protein isolate enriched oil bodies (WOB- WPI) and sodium caseinate enriched oil bodies (WOB-SC) emulsions were incubated for 2 hours in conditions that mimic the stomach environment. After that, the samples were incubated for 2 additional hours in conditions that mimic the duodenal environment. The physicochemical properties of the emulsions before, during, and after digestion were investigated by measuring the s-potential and the volume mean diameter (d4,3). The microstructures of the emulsions were analysed using light and confocal microscopy. SDS-PAGE was used to examine protein breakdown from pre and post digestion of emulsion samples.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo