Formulating functional foods with long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids: Challenges and opportunities

The development of functional foods and supplements containing bioactive lipids, such as esters of long‐chain PUFA (LC‐PUFA), is very challenging. Although the requirements and nutritional value of LC‐PUFA are widely recognized, their physical and chemical characteristics are limiting the choice of product applications, packaging materials, processing, and shelf‐life conditions. In this issue of the European Journal of Lipid Science and Technology, Borhaug et al. report a new technology to produce water soluble concentrate of LC‐PUFA. Opportunities and challenges for this new generation of ingredients are discussed in the present commentary. See accompanying article by Borhaug et al. on pages 1235–1242