Omega-3 fatty acids:nutritional aspects,sources,and encapsulation strategies for food fortification

This review focuses on health beneficial aspects of omega-3 fatty acids and microencapsulation technologies to prevent oxidation and off flavour formation in foods. The paper is broadly divided thematically in three sections. First section of this review discusses the biochemistry of omega-3 fatty acids, their classification and formation of off flavours due to oxidation of omega-3 fatty acids. Different sources of omega-3 fatty acids (alpha lenolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)) are also briefly explained. Second section discusses about major health effects of omega-3 fatty acids intake and briefly explains the effects on cardiovascular diseases, neurological diseases, cancer chemoprevention, controlling body weight, inflammation, etc. Inspite of so many health beneficial effects, fortification of these fatty acids to food products becomes a challenging task due to unstability and susceptibility of omega-3 fattya cids to oxidation. Microencapsulation has been hypothesised to be an effective technique to mask the unpleasant taste of certain ingredients and, more recently, to delay lipid oxidation of PUFA, which increases the stability of omega-3 fatty acids. Next section mainly focuses on different microencapsulation techniques, various water soluble and insoluble microencapsulates and about various food prodects fortified with microencapsulated omega 3-fatty acids.