Encapsulation of curcumin within oil-in-water emulsions prepared by premix membrane emulsification: Impact of droplet size and carrier oil type on physicochemical stability and in vitro bioaccessibility

International audienceOil-in-water emulsions containing curcumin with different droplet size (small ≈ 0.5 µm, medium ≈ 0.8 µm, large ≈ 3.7 µm and premix ≈ 60 µm) were prepared through premix membrane emulsification using different carrier oils: tributyrin (short chain triglycerides, SCT), medium chain triglycerides (MCT) and corn oil (long chain triglycerides, LCT). An in vitro gastrointestinal model was used to evaluate the impact of oil and droplet size on lipid digestion and bioaccessibility. Lipid digestion and bioaccessibility decreased with the increase of droplet size for LCT-based emulsions, whereas there was no significant difference for small, medium and large emulsions in SCT and MCT-based emulsions. In addition, encapsulation efficiency played an important role in determining bioaccessibility. Bioaccessibility in MCT premix was significantly lower than that in other size MCT-based emulsions because of its low encapsulation efficiency. The bioaccessibility decreased in the order MCT > SCT > LCT in each size of emulsions