Engineered emulsions for obesity treatment

Background: Obesity is a world-wide crisis and imposes both social and health problems to individuals. It is normally caused by overfeeding and incessant consumption of high fat foods. The food industry seeks approaches for fabrication of obesity-treating commodities through decreasing the digestibility of administered food and declining feeding portion size. Engineered oil-in-water emulsions are considered convenient contenders to suppress body energy intake while keeping a normal-fat diet. Scope and approach: Intragastric gelation of ingested emulsions and triggering the so-called ileal brake feedback mechanism are introduced as two potent strategies to diminish the feeding rate and energy uptake by body. Orally administered emulsions that gel in the stomach, then transform back to emulsion at the upper small intestine and go through the duodenum and jejunum undigested, to finally deliver fat bodies into the distal ileum are promising for protracting the gastric residency of meal and energy intake suppression over the lifecourse in obese and overweight people. Key findings and conclusions: Pectin and alginate-enriched milk protein-stabilized emulsions may form emulgel lumps in the stomach; however, more efficient tactics are required to guaranty the intragastric gelation and pass of emulsions as stable through the upper small intestine. Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are highly acid and digestion-resistant particles with documented ability to form Pickering emulsions. Surface carboxylation of CNCs by food-grade methods and fabrication of carboxylated CNC-stabilized emulsions would yield intragastrically gel-able and intestinally non-digestible foodstuffs for obesity treatment. A wisely designed emulsion can release enveloped pre-hydrolyzed oil cargo into the ileum for the lymphatic absorption.