Gelatin molecular structures affect behaviors of fish oil-loaded traditional and Pickering emulsions.

As the differences of traditional and Pickering emulsions might have resulted from stabilizer structures, this study analyzes the effects of gelatin molecular structures (uncrosslinked molecules vs. crosslinked molecules) on the preparation, long-term storage, and dilution of fish oil-loaded traditional and Pickering emulsions. Both traditional and Pickering emulsions have three types of droplets with different sizes, and all the droplet sizes were exponentially decreased with the increase of stabilizer concentration. Pickering emulsions have slightly lower droplet sizes compared with traditional emulsions. Traditional emulsions have three different emulsion forms (liquid, redispersible emulsion gel, and unredispersible emulsion gel), whereas Pickering emulsions only have the liquid form. Emulsion creaming stability was dependent on stabilizer molecular structures and stabilizer concentrations. The two emulsions have similar and good dilution stability. This work demonstrates that gelatin molecular structures affect droplet size, emulsion forms, and creaming stability, but not droplet size types and emulsion dilution stability.