Resumen
A new original process has been set-up to obtain hydroxytyrosol-enriched food by means of CO2 supercritical fluid extraction. The process is based on the direct adsorption of hydroxytyrosol on selected foodstuff (e.g., flour, whole-wheat flour, and sugar) when placed in contact with olive oil (which is known to contain this phenol) under controlled temperature and pressure conditions of supercritical CO2. The transfer of the nutraceutical to the foodstuff was initially evaluated using a fortified olive oil model and was then applied to commercial olive oil and foodstuff. The yield of the hydroxytyrosol transfer was demonstrated to be quantitative. In order to prove the suitability of the final products, hydroxytyrosol-enriched flour was used to prepare a bread roll, which maintained the nutraceutical characteristics after the cooking. Finally, DPPH based experiments were performed to prove the radical scavenging activity of the functionalized foodstuff.