ABSTRACT
The current study was designed to assess the safety and quality status of street-vended barbecue chicken samples. The samples were collected from four regions of Faisalabad city: Ghulam Mohammad Abad (R1), Jhang Road (R2), Sargodha Road (R3), and Satiana Road (R4); and compared with the self-prepared barbecue chicken sample (R0). Purposely, all the collected samples were subjected to assess the quality aspects by physicochemical analyses. The results of the physicochemical analysis showed that moisture content varied from 54% to 60%, crude protein 26.97% to 32.87%, crude fat 7.25% to 9.00%, crude ash 1.61% to 1.72%, pH 5.60 to 6.30, free fatty acid value 1.00% to 1.39%, and peroxide value 0.63 to 0.84 meq/Kg. Results pertaining to the enumeration of total microbial load and total coliform count exhibit 2.39-5.17 and 1.20-3.20 log cfu/g, respectively. The samples were assessed for heavy metals (Pb, Zn, Cd, and Fe) by atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AAS). The concentration of highly toxic metals Pb and Cd was found to be much higher than recommended value as they ranged from 1.90 to 3.70 mg/kg for Pb and 0.10 to 0.90 mg/kg for Cd. However, the level of essential metals (Fe and Zn) in barbecue chicken samples ranged from 67.10 to 180 and 8.30 to 35.80 mg/kg which was much higher than their safe limits for Fe (15 ppm) and Zn (5 ppm), respectively. The study concludes that the consumption of street-vended barbecue chicken possesses to be a serious public health risk for consumers.
ABSTRACT
Probiotics confer numerous health benefits and functional foods prepared with these microbes own largest markets. However, their viability during transit from gastrointestinal tract is a concerning issue. Microencapsulation of probiotics is a novel technique of major interest to increase their survivability in GIT and food matrices by providing a physical barrier to protect them under harsh conditions. This article contributes the knowledge regarding microencapsulation by discussing probiotic foods, different methods and approaches of microencapsulation, coating materials, their release mechanisms at the target site, and interaction with probiotics, efficiency of encapsulated probiotics, their viability assessment methods, applications in food industry, and their future perspective. In our opinion, encapsulation has significantly got importance in the field of innovative probiotic enriched functional foods development to preserve their viability and long-term survival rate until product expiration date and their passage through gastro-intestinal tract. Previous review work has targeted some aspects of microencapsulation, this article highlights different methods of probiotics encapsulation and coating materials in relation with food matrices as well as challenges faced during applications: Gut microbiota; Lactic acid bacteria; Micro-encapsulation; Stability enhancement; Cell's release, Health benefits.
