Physicochemical, textural, and sensory characteristics of ice cream incorporated with Nigella sativa seed oil microcapsules

Abstract

Nowadays, there is a growing demand in purchasing nutrition with supplementary beneficial compounds such as antioxidants, phenolics, phytosterols, etc. The producers supplement such functional ingredients to food products in order to attract the health-aware consumers (Shaviklo et al., 2011). There is an increasing general agreement that individual phenolic compounds may influence the key enzymes' activities in direct apart from their antioxidant activities (McDougall et al., 2005).Nigella sativa L. (Ranunculaceae family) commonly known as black cumin, is an annual plant that its seeds have long been consumed in the Middle East as traditional medicine (Gharby et al., 2015). It has been traditionally utilized to treat fever, headache, anxiety, diarrhea, and stroke and is well-known for powerful anti-inflammatory activity (Bourgou et al., 2010;Randhawa & Alghamdi, 2011). It was used to treat diseases such as asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, and rheumatism as well (Ahmad et al., 2013). The Nigella sativa seed oil (NSO 3 ) demonstrates great promise as an excellent source of phenols including thymoquinone, carvacrol, t-anethole, and 4-terpinoel, essential fatty acids such as oleic acid, linoleic acid, and linolenic acid, and lipidsoluble bioactive compounds (Piras et al., 2013;Ramadan et al., 2012). Encapsulation, which is a practical approach to preserve functional compounds throughout storage time, avoids the undesired 3 Nigella sativa seed oil.