Use of fatty acid/monoglyceride vesicle dispersions for stabilizing O/W emulsions

The weak solubility of monoglycerides often hampers their use as emulsifier in food and other industrial applications. Herein, we report on the formulation of emulsions from a lipid blend fatty acid/monoglyceride. It is shown that the formation of palmitic acid/palmitin vesicles is a prerequisite for the formulation of emulsions whereas no emulsion could be produced from pure constituents. Emulsions at various palmitic acid/palmitin molar ratio exhibit no flocculation and coalesced with the formation of a creaming layer. The incorporation of a polysaccharide (pectin) in the aqueous phase prevents the coalescence but creaming is still observed. Pectin does not strongly affect the viscosity of the dispersions before emulsification. On emulsions, its influence on viscosity is more pronounced but its stabilizing effect results also from interactions with palmitic acid and palmitin at the interface. Those interactions are demonstrated by compression isotherms of Langmuir monolayers and by Brewster Angle Microscopy.