**2.4 Oil-in-water (O/W) emulsions preparation**

Commercial sunflower oil was used to prepare oil-in-water (O/W) emulsions with a formulation of 30:70 (wt/wt) according to Pan et al., 2004. Emulsions were prepared at room temperature in an Ultra-Turrax T25 homogenizer using S 25 N–10 G dispersing tool (7.5 mm rotor diameter) at 10,000 rpm for 1 min, with the addition of the different modified sunflower lecithins in a range of 0.1–2.0% (wt/wt). This process was carried out in triplicate for each case.

#### **2.5 Optical characterization of emulsions**

The backscattering of light was measured using a QuickScan Vertical Scan Analyzer (Coulter Corp., Miami, FL). The backscattering of monochromatic light (λ = 850 nm) of the emulsions was determined as a function of the height of the sample tube (ca. 65 mm) in order to quantify the rate of the different destabilization processes during the first 90 min. This methodology allowed to discriminate between particle migration (sedimentation, creaming) and particle size variation (flocculation, coalescence) processes (Pan et al., 2002). The basis of the vertical scan analyzer profiles has been exhaustively studied by Mengual (Mengual et al., 1999).
