Particle Size Distribution of Dietary Lipid Assemblies

Many foods can be described as dispersed systems whose microstructure consists of various types of objects usually dispersed in a continuous medium. The size distributions of these objects influence several food properties such as rheology, physical and chemical stabilities, sensorial perception, and digestion. In this chapter, we focus on the characterization of lipid-based assemblies, which are mainly droplets, liposomes/vesicles, and micelles in the context of food and digestion. We present the principle of and give detailed protocols for the laser diffraction (LD) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) methods for measuring particle size distributions and mean sizes of lipid assemblies.