Society is increasingly concerned with well‐being and health issues. Knowing
the long‐term effects of a poor diet, tobacco and alcohol consumption, sedentary
life, and high levels of stress, consumers are becoming more attracted to food
products with recognized beneficial health effects. Phenolic compounds, including
anthocyanins, have been described as powerful antioxidants, and are said to
have other bioactive attributes such as antimicrobial or even antitumoral properties,
usually correlated with the presence of these compounds in food products
(Carocho and Ferreira, 2013a; Carocho and Ferreira, 2013b; Martins et al., 2015).
There are numerous food matrices naturally enriched with phenolic compounds,
but nowadays, with the increasing market demand, these extracts or their isolated
individual compounds are being incorporated into many other products.
However, some of these molecules are naturally instable and/or susceptible to
degradation during food processing or storage. In general, phenolic compounds
with high molecular weight have very poor solubility and stability in water (Li
et al., 2015).
To overcome the problems related with the direct use of bioactives in their
free form in food matrices, the microencapsulation technique, through the
development of micro‐sized particle systems, will ensure protection of the bioactive
compounds and, additionally, functional properties to the final product.
The organoleptic characteristics of phenolic extracts and isolated compounds are
other important factors that drive researchers to study encapsulation of phenolic
compounds, because many of them have bitter or astringent tastes, due to the presence of terpenes and glycosylates (Drewnowski and Gomez‐Carneros,
2000). This factor is a decisive point for the food industry that must be considered
when developing novel products, because acceptance by consumers is
ultimately the most important reason for these studies. Controlled and targeted
delivery‐release studies are also crucial to understanding how the microspheres
will interact and behave as they transit the gastrointestinal tract, because it is
important to know if the bioactive form of the encapsulated phenolic compounds
is maintained (Dias et al., 2015).
