Publications

Obesity is driven by chronic energy surplus, sedentary lifestyles and environments that promote overconsumption of calorie-dense, nutrient-poor foods. Alongside pharmacotherapy and lifestyle interventions, functional foods enriched with bioactive nutraceuticals are increasingly explored as low-risk, population-wide tools for obesity prevention. Yet many promising compounds, including polyphenols, carotenoids, fatty acids and peptides, suffer from poor solubility, instability during processing and digestion, low oral bioavailability and limited targeting of metabolically relevant tissues. Nanotechnology-based delivery systems offer a way to overcome these barriers directly within the food matrix. Nanoengineered functional foods use nanoemulsions, nanoliposomes, solid lipid nanoparticles, biopolymer nanogels, nano-complexes and hybrid carriers to protect labile nutraceuticals, enhance gastrointestinal bioaccessibility and control their release and absorption. Recent work demonstrates that nanostructured systems can significantly increase bioavailability of key anti-obesity nutraceuticals such as curcumin, resveratrol and catechins and improve metabolic readouts in preclinical models. This review outlines the rationale for nanoengineering in functional foods for obesity prevention, describes major nanoencapsulation platforms, highlights representative nanonutraceuticals and smart “personalized” food concepts, and discusses safety, regulatory and consumer acceptance issues. Finally, we consider how nanostructured delivery systems might integrate into multi-level obesity prevention strategies and what evidence is needed for responsible translation from bench to supermarket shelf.