The starting materials were far from glamorous. Grape seed oil is a secondary product of winemaking, extracted from the pomace left behind after pressing. A large share of olive oils, meanwhile, never make the grade for extra virgin classification; roughly 41 percent of collected oils in some seasons are downgraded because of defects or excessive acidity, then refined and blended into cheaper commercial products. Refining stabilizes these oils, but it strips out most of the aromatic and bioactive compounds that give premium oils their complexity, leaving behind a neutral-tasting lipid with little antioxidant punch. Aromatization offers a route to upgrade these bland carriers, and pairing the process with food by-products multiplies the sustainability payoff.

The Italian team turned to ultrasound-assisted extraction, a green technology that accelerates the transfer of lipophilic compounds from plant material into oil. A 38 kHz probe-type system operating at 70 percent of a 1000 W generator delivered cavitation bubbles that collapse violently in the oil, rupturing plant cell walls and driving phenolics, capsaicinoids, and pigments into the surrounding fat in minutes rather than days. Dried chili peppers and basil leaves, both rejected from normal sale channels for failing size or shape standards, were ground and processed at carefully controlled low temperatures of 30 to 35 degrees Celsius for just 10 minutes each. Conventional infusion methods can take days at room temperature, exposing the oil to oxidation throughout; the ultrasound route compresses that window dramatically.

Chemically, the transformation was striking. Basil flavoring pushed total phenolic content more than 30 percent higher than chili flavoring, with basil-infused olive oil reaching levels comparable to unflavored extra virgin olive oil. Chili pepper, by contrast, was the star of carotenoid enrichment: both chili-flavored oils showed significant carotenoid uptake, while the controls and basil versions showed little or none. These pigments are largely lost during refining, which can strip as much as 98.6 percent of carotenoids from an oil, so their recovery via ultrasound represents a meaningful restoration of both color and nutritional value. Radical-scavenging activity measured by the DPPH assay rose significantly in all flavored oils except chili-flavored olive oil, suggesting that non-polyphenolic antioxidants such as tocopherols and capsaicinoids also migrated into the oils.

Quality parameters told a more nuanced story. Peroxide values and free fatty acid levels remained essentially unchanged after chili flavoring, but basil flavoring raised peroxide values considerably, from around 3 to over 13 meq O2/kg in olive oil and above the Codex reference threshold of 10 for refined seed oils in grape seed oil. The researchers attribute this difference to the flavoring matrix rather than the oil itself, pointing to the varying endogenous enzymes and pro-oxidant compounds that different herbs carry. Still, the dramatically shortened processing time offers an advantage over traditional infusion, which in one published comparison caused a sevenfold rise in free fatty acids and a doubling of peroxide values over six days. The takeaway is that processing conditions and storage need to be tailored to each specific herb and oil combination.

Chemistry, however, is only half the battle. A functional oil nobody wants to buy is a commercial failure, so the team recruited 70 untrained consumers for a rigorous sensory trial at the University of Camerino under controlled ISO-standard conditions. In a first blind phase, participants rated appearance, odor, flavor, and pungency on hedonic scales without knowing anything about the samples. Chili-flavored oils came out on top, earning overall liking scores of 6.23 and 6.14 for olive and grape seed versions respectively, while basil versions scored 5.49 and 4.86. Interestingly, the unfamiliarity of grape seed oil did not drag its scores down relative to olive oil, suggesting that intrinsic sensory performance can compensate for limited consumer knowledge when no other cues are available.

Just-About-Right scales and penalty analysis pinpointed exactly where each formulation fell short. For both chili-flavored oils, pungency and flavor were frequently rated as too intense, with more than 60 percent of consumers finding the spiciness of chili-flavored grape seed oil excessive, making it the main driver of lost liking. Basil oils suffered the opposite problem: over half of participants rated their aroma and flavor as too weak, indicating a need for higher herb loading or longer extraction. These findings give product developers a concrete reformulation roadmap: tame the capsaicin burn, amplify the basil bouquet, and the oils themselves matter less than the flavoring matrix.

The most psychologically intriguing results came in the second phase, an informed expectation test in which participants learned the oil type, the flavoring matrix, and the polyphenol and antioxidant content of each basil oil before re-rating them. Flavor liking jumped by 15.37 percent for basil olive oil and 20.37 percent for basil grape seed oil compared to blind scores, a statistically significant assimilation effect consistent with expectation-disconfirmation theory. Overall liking rose 11.66 and 13.79 percent respectively, though those gains did not reach statistical significance. The effect was strongest for grape seed oil, the less familiar product, supporting the idea that positive sustainability and health information fills the knowledge gap that unfamiliar products typically suffer from.

Purchase intention shifted even more dramatically. Willingness to repurchase climbed from 46 to 64 percent for basil-flavored olive oil and from 29 to 46 percent for basil-flavored grape seed oil once the enrichment story was disclosed. Under expectation-disconfirmation theory, the positive cues about bioactive content and by-product valorization generated expectations that consumers then integrated into their hedonic judgments, even though the oils themselves were identical between the blind and informed rounds. The researchers note this pattern aligns with earlier work showing that nutritional and health-related claims can reshape sensory perception, and they caution that their same-session design, though mitigated by randomization and palate cleansing, may have introduced memory effects.

The study has limitations that the authors openly acknowledge: spectrophotometric assays captured overall antioxidant enrichment but not individual compounds, storage stability and batch variability remain untested, and the panel was overwhelmingly Italian, which matters given the cultural variability of spice tolerance. Future work should add chromatographic profiling, complementary antioxidant assays, shelf-life studies, and broader consumer panels. Still, the core message stands: a 10-minute burst of ultrasound can convert two discounted oils and two categories of agricultural waste into antioxidant-rich flavored products that consumers actively want, provided the label tells them why it matters. For an industry under pressure to cut waste and add value, the sound of sustainability may well be a 38 kHz hum.

Subject of Research: Ultrasound-assisted enrichment of refined olive and grape seed oils with basil and chili pepper by-products and its effect on consumer perception

Article Title: From By‐Products to Flavored Oils: Ultrasound‐Assisted Enrichment of Refined Olive and Grape Seed Oils and Consumer Perception Under Blind and Informed Conditions

Article References: Corsetti, S., Bailetti, L. I., Calzolari, S., Floridi, M., Sagratini, G., & Alessandroni, L. (2026). From By‐Products to Flavored Oils: Ultrasound‐Assisted Enrichment of Refined Olive and Grape Seed Oils and Consumer Perception Under Blind and Informed Conditions. Food Science & Nutrition, 14(9), Article e72374. https://doi.org/10.1002/fsn3.72374

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1002/fsn3.72374

Keywords: ultrasound-assisted extraction, grape seed oil, olive oil, food by-products, basil, chili pepper, antioxidants, polyphenols, carotenoids, consumer perception, circular economy, sensory evaluation

The authors begin with the supply side. Serum albumin is the most abundant protein in blood plasma, and slaughterhouse blood represents a massive, cheap and largely untapped reservoir of it. Plasma fractionation, a technology refined since the landmark Cohn fractionation work of the 1940s, allows albumin to be separated from other plasma proteins at industrial scale. In medicine, serum albumin is indispensable: it maintains osmotic pressure in the bloodstream, ferries fatty acids, hormones, drugs and metabolites through the circulation, and serves as a biomarker for liver function and inflammation. Recombinant DNA technology now permits production of human serum albumin in yeast and other expression systems, easing supply constraints for pharmaceutical use. But while the biomedical community has thoroughly industrialized the protein, the food industry has been far more hesitant, and the review asks why.

Part of the answer lies in the protein’s remarkable structure. Serum albumin is a single polypeptide chain of roughly 585 amino acids folded into a heart-shaped, three-domain architecture held together by disulfide bridges. This topology gives the protein its famous promiscuity: it possesses multiple hydrophobic pockets that can bind an astonishing range of small molecules. In food systems, that means albumin can sequester and carry bioactive compounds that would otherwise degrade or taste bitter. Studies reviewed by the authors show that bovine serum albumin binds polyphenols such as resveratrol, curcumin, genistein and tea catechins; food colorants like indigo carmine; preservatives such as sodium benzoate and sodium propionate; and flavor compounds including maltol. Each of these interactions has been mapped with spectroscopy, calorimetry and molecular docking, and each suggests a practical application: albumin could act as a natural carrier that protects delicate antioxidants through processing and delivery, then releases them in the gut.

The review’s survey of functional applications begins with emulsions, arguably the most mature arena for albumin in food research. As early as the 1980s, scientists demonstrated that bovine serum albumin is an effective emulsifier, rapidly adsorbing at oil-water interfaces and unfolding to form stabilizing films. Recent work has pushed the concept much further. Albumin stabilized fish oil-in-water emulsions, protecting oxidation-prone omega-3 lipids; it formed soft protein particles when glycated, capable of stabilizing high internal phase emulsions that resemble solid gels while containing mostly oil; and conjugates of albumin with maltodextrin or green tea polysaccharides showed improved emulsifying and antioxidant performance. Ultrasonically engineered albumin nanoparticles have recently been used to build ultra-stable Pickering emulsions, in which solid protein particles cling to droplet surfaces like microscopic armor. In these systems, albumin is not merely a model; it performs on par with the dairy and plant proteins that dominate commercial emulsifier markets.

Foams represent a second frontier, and one where albumin’s properties are particularly striking. Proteins stabilize foams by migrating to air-water interfaces and forming elastic films that resist coalescence, and albumin excels at this. Recent structural work using human serum albumin has revealed, at near-atomic resolution, how the protein reorganizes when it reaches a foam surface, insights that explain its exceptional surface activity. Studies reviewed in the paper show albumin-based nanofibrils with strong emulsifying and foaming activity, and complexes of bovine serum albumin with chitooligosaccharides that have been tested directly in angel food cake, one of the most foam-dependent products in the bakery repertoire. That a blood-derived protein can improve the texture of a familiar dessert illustrates how far the technology has moved beyond abstract model systems.

The review then turns to delivery architectures: nanoparticles and hydrogels. Albumin self-assembles into nanoscale particles under pH-driven, ultrasonic or desolvation methods, and food scientists have loaded these particles with curcumin and resveratrol together, with green tea catechins, or with extracts of Lycium barbarum leaves, consistently reporting enhanced protection and bioavailability of the cargo. Hydrogels formed from albumin, whether through heat-induced aggregation, pH manipulation or the formation of amyloid-like fibrils, offer soft, biocompatible matrices that can encapsulate vitamins and other labile nutrients and release them in a controlled fashion. Additive manufacturing studies have even shown that albumin-based hydrogels and bioplastics can be 3D printed, hinting at personalized nutrition applications in which nutrient-loaded protein scaffolds are printed directly into foods. These systems borrow heavily from the biomedical literature, where albumin hydrogels and nanoparticles are already advanced drug-delivery platforms, and the review makes the case that the food field should keep borrowing.

Perhaps the most topical section of the review concerns cultured meat. Cell-cultivated meat production currently depends heavily on fetal bovine serum, a costly, ethically fraught and poorly defined supplement used to grow muscle cells in bioreactors. Serum albumin is one of the principal functional components of that serum, providing growth factors a stable carrier, buffering capacity and osmotic support. The Chung-Ang University group has itself published studies showing that livestock blood can be processed into fetal bovine serum substitutes and that egg-derived extracts may replace serum components, and other teams have demonstrated serum-free media for bovine satellite cells and fish myoblasts, as well as recombinant albumin produced in Pichia pastoris for serum-free culture. In this context, albumin is not a niche ingredient but a central node in the effort to make cultivated meat affordable, scalable and free of animal-derived serum, one of the biggest bottlenecks facing the entire industry.

So why, despite all this capability, is serum albumin still mainly a model protein in food science rather than a listed ingredient? The review identifies a cluster of consumer-facing barriers. Cultural acceptance is foremost: blood has deep culinary roots in some traditions, from black pudding to blood soups, but in many Western markets the idea of blood-derived ingredients triggers disgust responses that no technical performance can easily overcome. Religious dietary laws, including halal and kosher requirements, impose strict constraints on blood and blood derivatives, effectively excluding the ingredient from entire markets. Dietary trends amplify the problem: the rapid growth of plant-based and vegetarian eating patterns means a growing share of consumers actively avoid animal-sourced proteins, however functional they may be. Then there is allergenicity. Serum albumins are unusual allergens, highly cross-reactive across mammalian species, meaning that a consumer sensitized to, say, cat or dog dander albumin may react to bovine serum albumin in food. Milk and meat products already contain trace albumins that can trigger reactions in sensitive individuals, and adding concentrated albumin to processed foods would raise genuine safety and labeling questions.

The authors do not present these obstacles as a verdict; they present them as an agenda. The review’s forward-looking sections point toward strategies that could defuse each barrier: recombinant and precision-fermentation routes to albumin that decouple the protein from blood; careful processing and formulation that reduce allergenic potential; transparent labeling and consumer research to understand where blood-derived, fermentation-derived and hybrid ingredients might be accepted; and targeted applications where albumin’s unique binding and interfacial properties deliver value that commodity proteins cannot, such as protecting expensive nutraceuticals or enabling serum-free cultured meat media. In a circular economy framing, valorizing slaughterhouse blood also addresses a genuine sustainability problem, converting a waste stream with a heavy environmental footprint into high-value protein.

The broader message of the review is a lesson about how ingredients actually reach our plates. Serum albumin has spent half a century proving itself in emulsions, foams, gels, nanoparticles and cell culture, accumulating an impressive technical dossier along the way. What has been missing is not science but systems thinking: the economics of extraction, the regulations governing novel foods, the allergies and taboos of consumers, and the competitive price of soy, whey and egg proteins. As the food industry races to feed a growing population with less waste, fewer animals and cleaner labels, proteins like serum albumin, sitting unnoticed in an undervalued by-product, may find their moment. The science, as this review makes abundantly clear, has been ready for some time. The remaining challenge is persuading eaters, regulators and manufacturers to take a second look at what flows down the slaughterhouse drain.

Subject of Research: Serum albumin as a functional protein ingredient in food technologies

Article Title: Serum albumin in food technologies: current applications and future perspectives

Article References: Venter, C., Mariano, E., Lee, D.-Y., & Hur, S. J. (2026). Serum albumin in food technologies: current applications and future perspectives. Food Science and Biotechnology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10068-026-02305-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10068-026-02305-7

Keywords: serum albumin, emulsions, foams, nanoparticles, hydrogels, cultured meat, slaughterhouse blood, ligand binding, allergenicity, Pickering emulsions, food by-products, serum-free media

Sea buckthorn, Hippophae rhamnoides L., is a deciduous shrub native to the Xinjiang region of China and now widely distributed across Asia, Europe and Canada. Its berries are loaded with carbohydrates, polysaccharides, polyphenols, vitamins and amino acids, and have been linked to antioxidant, anticarcinogenic, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial and hepatoprotective effects. Proanthocyanidins, or PAs, are oligomeric and polymeric flavonoid polyphenols that accumulate in the fruit peel, seeds and stems. They are prized for potent antioxidant activity, cardiovascular protection, anti-obesity potential through pancreatic lipase inhibition, and enhancement of microvascular integrity. Yet most research has focused on PAs from the pulp, while the seed, leaf and peel fractions, which are routinely discarded during processing, have been largely ignored.

Extracting PAs from plant matrices is technically difficult because plant cell walls resist penetration and polyphenols degrade easily. Conventional approaches such as high-pressure extraction, supercritical carbon dioxide and ultrasonic-assisted extraction all suffer from high equipment costs, heavy organic solvent consumption, large energy inputs and secondary pollution risks. The Chinese team turned instead to deep eutectic solvents, or DESs, a class of designer solvents formed when a hydrogen bond donor and a hydrogen bond acceptor combine into a eutectic mixture. Typically built from cheap, biodegradable and environmentally benign components, DESs can dissolve polyphenols through hydrogen-bonding networks that are stronger than the interactions between water and the solutes themselves, loosening the binding forces that hold phenolic compounds inside the plant matrix.

The researchers tested five choline chloride-based solvent systems in which choline chloride served as the hydrogen bond acceptor, paired with five different donors: 1,4-butanediol, citric acid, lactic acid, urea and malonic acid. Water content proved critical, producing a characteristic bell-shaped yield curve. At low water levels the solvent is too viscous to penetrate the seed matrix efficiently; moderate water addition disrupts inter-solvent hydrogen bonds and lowers viscosity, boosting diffusivity. But beyond an optimum, added water competes with the PAs for hydrogen-bonding sites and hydrates the solvent components, weakening the DES-PA interactions that drive extraction. All five solvent systems significantly outperformed 75 percent ethanol, and the champion, choline chloride with 1,4-butanediol at 50 percent water, reached an absorbance of 0.255, a full 201.2 percent higher than the ethanol control.

With the solvent chosen, the team optimized the process using single-factor experiments followed by a three-factor, three-level Box-Behnken response surface design. The solid-to-liquid ratio exerted the strongest influence, followed by temperature and time, and the interaction between solvent ratio and temperature was highly significant because heating thins the solvent and speeds mass transfer only when enough solvent is present, while excessive heat destroys the thermolabile PAs. The model predicted a maximum yield of 48.025 milligrams per gram at a 41:1 milligram-per-milliliter ratio, 61.11 degrees Celsius and 3.29 hours. Validation runs at practical adjusted conditions delivered 47.591 milligrams per gram, a relative error of just 0.90 percent, with a regression fit of R squared 0.9964. Purification on D101 macroporous adsorption resin lifted the extract to 69.17 percent total proanthocyanidins.

Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry then revealed exactly what the green solvent had pulled from the seeds. Monomeric catechin and epicatechin appeared at mass-to-charge ratios of 291.08 and 292.08, while the dimeric proanthocyanidins B1 through B4 showed characteristic signals at m/z 579.15 to 581.15. Notably, no trimer or tetramer peaks were detected, indicating that sea buckthorn seed PAs consist almost entirely of monomers and dimers. Antioxidant testing across three independent assays showed the extract scavenging DPPH radicals at 4.61, ABTS cation radicals at 5.53 and reducing ferric iron at 6.24 micromoles of Trolox equivalents per milligram, respectable values that trailed only slightly behind pure ascorbic acid and confirmed the extract retained strong reducing and radical-scavenging capacity.

The second half of the study tackled the compounds’ Achilles heel: poor water solubility, instability under heat, pH swings and gastrointestinal conditions, and rapid metabolism in the body. Using ionic gelation, the team encapsulated the purified PAs within a composite wall of sodium alginate and carboxymethyl cellulose, extruding the mixture into a calcium chloride bath to form microcapsules with an encapsulation efficiency of 89.015 percent. Scanning electron microscopy showed intact, roughly elliptical particles without tears or holes, their surface folds a by-product of freeze-drying that increases surface area and may aid retention.

Spectroscopic and thermal analyses confirmed that the capsule walls protect without chemically altering the payload. Fourier transform infrared spectra showed hydrogen-bond interactions between the phenolic hydroxyl groups of the PAs and the polysaccharide wall, but no new peaks and no shift in the aromatic ring vibrations, proving a non-covalent, structure-preserving association. Thermogravimetric analysis was even more dramatic: free PAs lost mass sharply between 100 and 150 degrees Celsius and left only about 8 percent residual char at 600 degrees, whereas loaded microcapsules degraded gradually like the blank wall material, retaining roughly 26 percent residue and shielding the core from direct heat exposure, a critical advantage for foods and pharmaceuticals that undergo thermal processing.

Simulated digestion told a similar story. In gastric fluid at pH 2.0, free PAs flooded out, releasing 29.58 percent within the first 30 minutes and 53.64 percent by 180 minutes, while microencapsulated PAs released only 2.86 percent early on and 21.99 percent at 180 minutes, a delay of more than 31 percentage points. The team attributes this to the pH sensitivity of alginate, whose carboxyl groups protonate in acid, shrinking the matrix and blocking penetration. In neutral intestinal fluid the balance reversed: microcapsules reached a cumulative release of 45.65 percent at 180 minutes, surpassing the free PAs at 39.57 percent and still climbing, exactly the controlled, intestine-targeted release profile desired for maximizing absorption and bioactivity.

The authors are candid about the hurdles separating bench from factory. The choline chloride-1,4-butanediol solvent is relatively viscous, complicating continuous large-scale extraction, and freeze-drying inflates production costs. They propose screening lower-viscosity ternary solvent systems, coupling extraction with ultrasound or microwaves, blending in cheaper agricultural waste-derived polysaccharides such as corn fiber or rice bran cellulose, and ultimately running in vivo trials of bioavailability, tissue distribution and long-term safety. If those steps succeed, the implications extend well beyond sea buckthorn. The integrated solvent-and-encapsulation strategy offers a reusable blueprint for converting fruit-processing residues of every kind into stabilized, deliverable nutraceutical ingredients, turning industrial garbage into functional-food gold with nothing more exotic than biodegradable chemistry.

Subject of Research: Green extraction and microencapsulation of sea buckthorn seed proanthocyanidins using deep eutectic solvents

Article Title: Extraction and purification and microcapsulation of sea buckthorn seed proanthocyanidins using deep eutectic solvent-assisted extraction

Article References: Sun, Y., Sun, D., Ahmad, M., Li, X., Huang, M., Bi, X., Han, L., & Hao, G. (2026). Extraction and purification and microcapsulation of sea buckthorn seed proanthocyanidins using deep eutectic solvent-assisted extraction. Food Chemistry: X, 39, Article 104394. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fochx.2026.104394

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: sea buckthorn, proanthocyanidins, deep eutectic solvents, microencapsulation, antioxidants, green extraction, sodium alginate, carboxymethyl cellulose, response surface methodology, in vitro digestion, food by-products, functional foods