**5.7 Application in food industry**

As versatile lipid-based systems, liposomes have shown some potential in the encapsulation of food ingredients. In this field, the use of liposomes aims to stabilize some nutraceutical or dietetic ingredients during the storage, to improve their organoleptic characters or to provide a controlled and targeted delivery of these substances in a specific tissue. The shelf life and efficacy of instable bioactive products such as vitamins, enzymes and anti-oxidative agents have been prolonged by their liposomal encapsulation. For example, proteinase and lipase loaded liposomes have been reported to improve the ripening of cheese notably in preventing proteolysis of casein [28, 76]. Yokota et al. [27] have successfully improved the taste and odor of casein hydrolysate in dietetic preparations by liposomal encapsulation. In addition to the encapsulation of dietetic compounds, liposomes have been recently used to encapsulate a cyanobacterium, namely Spirulina platensis, as a source of proteins [77]. Although the use of liposomes in food industry is still at the infant stages of development, advanced studies have been launched to investigate much more attractive applications, such as detection of food contaminants by means of stimuli-responsive liposomes for food safety [76].
