Recent Advances in Probiotic Encapsulation to Improve Viability under Storage and Gastrointestinal Conditions and Their Impact on Functional Food Formulation

Abstract

Probiotics are beneficial microorganisms that can improve human health. However, probiotics are susceptible to adverse effects of processing and storage, and their viability decreases during their passage through the gastrointestinal tract. Therefore, encapsulation processes are being developed to improve probiotic survival. This review highlights the fundamentals of the encapsulation process to produce encapsulated probiotics. It also discusses the experimental variables that impact the encapsulation efficiency of probiotics and their viability under storage conditions and under gastrointestinal conditions (in vitro and in vivo). Probiotic encapsulation provides a higher viability to microorganisms, leading to the development of new dairy and nondairy probiotic foods without altering their physical and sensorial properties that can improve human health.