Impact of encapsulating probiotics with cocoa powder on the viability of probiotics during chocolate processing, storage, and in vitro gastrointestinal digestion

Abstract

Abstract: Chocolates can be formulated as a functional food via enrichment with probiotics. However, the added probiotics must overcome the challenges of processing and storage conditions and the harsh gastrointestinal environment. The study aimed to overcome these challenges using two different formulations of cocoa powder as alternative encapsulants along with Na-alginate (A1) and Na-alginate and fructooligosaccharides (A2). Seven different probiotic strains were encapsulated individually using the new formulations and viabilities of these encapsulated probiotics were assessed prior to and after they were added to chocolates. The highest achieved encapsulation efficiencies were 93.40% for ..