Observation of Dietary Lipids Using Microscopy Techniques

Dietary lipids can be observed by different microscopy techniques that exhibit complementarity in the given information. This chapter presents light microscopy; polarized light microscopy; fluorescence microscopy including conventional (i.e., wide-field) fluorescence microscopy and confocal laser scanning microscopy; electron microscopy (EM) including transmission EM, cryo-EM, and scanning EM; and atomic force microscopy. The protocols need to be adapted to the samples. In particular, lipid droplets dispersed in oil-in-water emulsions are thermodynamically instable and need special care when preparing the samples for microscopic observations.