| dc.description.abstract | Dietary supplements and pharmaceuticals are commonly taken orally as tablets or capsules. However, a significant fraction of the population experience discomfort when swallowing such dosage forms, which can result in poor compliance. These issues may be reduced by instead formulating the active ingredients into a convenient and palatable gelatin-based chewable dosage unit. Unfortunately, making a chewable dosage unit is not straightforward, and multiple potential challenges are presented, along with potential solutions. One challenge is linked to gelatin-based chewable emulsions. We show that gelatin-stabilized emulsions are unstable in gastric fluids, due to the combined action of pepsin and gastric mucin, which may have negative implications for further intestinal digestion and bioavailability. However, we found that including a small amount of the polyanionic polysaccharide κ-carrageenan into the gelatin emulsions eliminated this issue, due to protective electrostatic interactions between the gelatin and κ-carrageenan at gastric pH.
The lipase enzymes that digest emulsions only work at droplet surfaces. Emulsions with smaller droplets provide a larger total surface area which may lead to more rapid lipolysis. This has previously been shown to be, in some cases, beneficial for the bioavailability of lipids and lipid soluble compounds. To examine this in more detail, we prepared emulsions with three different droplet sizes, containing triglycerides and vitamin D3, and examined them with both in vitro simulated intestinal digestion and in vivo rat feeding experiments. We found that smaller droplets were to some degree beneficial for increased uptake of triglycerides. Interestingly, droplet size had no significant impact on the uptake of vitamin D3 from the same emulsions, which may be due to different uptake mechanisms.
While gelatin is an excellent gelling agent, it is derived from animals. Many consumers prefer to avoid animal products like gelatin for ethical and/or environmental reasons. In the final part of this thesis, preparing gels and gelled emulsions using vegetable protein was explored. It was shown that acid-induced particulate gels and gelled emulsions with good mechanical properties could be prepared using native faba bean protein in combination with λ-carrageenan. Such gels could be of interest in regards to formulation of vegetarian food products. | en_US |
