Encapsulation: A Promising Technology for Future Food Applications, but What Policies are Countries Following Today?

The simple definition of encapsulation is “enclosing something in a capsule”. Encapsulation is applied as micro and nanotechnology in Pharmaceutical and Food Sciences for varied materials. Inasmuch as the technology is promising, in the forthcoming, we will see much more implementations of encapsulation. However, the adverse effects of encapsulated tiny materials are unknown, and the health authorities of countries do not follow specific legislations on micro and nano-encapsulated foods. Indeed, applications in micro and nanotechnology are observed with varied regulations in different countries. For instance, in the USA by the FDA: No regulation for encapsulation studies. Standard tests are applied to those micro and nano foods like other food products. In European Union by EFSA: No strict rules, requests approval from the authorized institutions regarding the safety of the products to be applied by the technologies. Besides, there are no regulations in Argentina, Canada, China, and the Republic of Korea for nanomaterials used in foods. Thus, encapsulated food products are tiny, and accumulations of materials in the human body are unknown. More importantly, encapsulated foods might change human DNA and might create dangerous by-products to the environment as well.