Abstract:
Functional foods comprise fortified, enhanced, or enriched foods that give health benefits beyond the
provision of essential nutrients. Although curcumin possesses numerous beneficial bioactivities,
formulation of functional cookies incorporating curcumin is challenging due to its poor solubility,
low bioavailability, and instability under different environmental conditions. This study was carried
out to investigate the effectiveness of liposomal encapsulation on the retention of the antioxidant
activity of curcumin during the baking of fortified cookies. The curcumin-encapsulated liposomes
showed a very high encapsulation efficiency, which amounted to 90.58 %. Three types of cookies
were prepared using a standard cookie recipe with slight modifications. Those were regular cookies
(T1), cookies fortified with 1g/kg free curcumin (T2), and cookies fortified with 1g/kg liposomal
curcumin (T3). Sensory and physicochemical properties of the cookies revealed that liposomal
curcumin can be incorporated into cookies without any negative effects on the properties of the
cookies except color. As expected, the color of the liposomal curcumin incorporated cookies showed,
higher yellowness than the regular cookie. The extracts of the cookies were analyzed for antioxidant
activity using 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging assay and ferric-reducing
antioxidant power (FRAP) assay. Similarly, liposomal curcumin incorporated cookies (T3) exhibited
higher antioxidant potential than free curcumin incorporated cookies (T2). In fact, the DPPH radical
scavenging activity of T3 and T2 were 92.70 ±3.34%, and 84.73 ±3.37%, respectively, and the FRAP
values of T3 and T2, were 683.46 ±91.00 µg/mL and 645.46 ±18.00µg/mL with the reference of
ascorbic acid standard respectively. Thus, fortification of cookies with liposomal curcumin may be
carried out successfully to retain the antioxidant activity of curcumin during baking.
