Emerging techniques applied to by-products for food fortification

Considering the increasing consumer demand for healthy food, the extract from broccoli by-products was studied. To this aim, in the first step, three extraction techniques were compared in terms of extraction efficiency. The best method was the pressurized liquid extraction. Then, the extract microencapsulation was optimized in terms of type of wall material (between Capsul and maltodextrins), concentration of wall material (10–20–30%, w/v), core/wall material ratio (1:2, 1:5, 1:10, 1:20) and inlet temperature (80, 100, 130, 150, 170 °C). The optimal conditions were found with 10% maltodextrins as wall material, core/wall material ratio 1/2 at 80 °C. Finally, the obtained microencapsulated extract was added at 5% (w/w) to fish burgers. Results demonstrated that total phenolic content, total flavonoids and antioxidant activity of enriched fish products were significantly higher than the control burgers, thus confirming that both process and cooking did not greatly affect the nutritional properties of extracted compounds.