Enhancing milk-based drinks with lyophilized guar gum-coated cyanidin-3-O-glucoside-loaded nano-nutriosomes: Physicochemical and antioxidant characterizations

Cyanidin-3-O-glucoside (C3G) is a flavonoid compound recognized for its diverse biological properties. It is considered one of the most promising flavonoids due to its potential health benefits. Still, its use in functional foods, particularly beverages, is limited due to degradation and instability under various environmental conditions. Recent advancements involving novel freeze-dried guar gum-coated nano-nutriosome (FD-GG-NS) carriers have demonstrated effective strategies to address these challenges. The purpose of this work was to develop and evaluate a novel freeze-dried guar gum-coated nano-nutriosomes that would improve the physicochemical stability and antioxidant activity of C3G in milk-based beverages. The results exhibited that C3G was successfully encapsulated in freeze-dried NS and GG-C3G-NS, with good encapsulation efficacy (>91.02 %) and particle sizes varied from 175.27 to 186.60 nm within a respectable range of PDI (<0.3). Firstly, to investigate the optimum concentration 0.4 % was shown to be the best concentration due to improved stability and dietary fiber content. The FD-GG-C3G-NS in milk drinks improved the color, turbidity, ζ-potential, and sensory assessment while declining apparent viscosity and acidity with improved antioxidant activity during storage for 15th days at 4 °C. Thus, integrating C3G into functional dairy drinks using guar gum-coated nano-nutriosomes has broad prospects in the food industry.