Botanical extracts are core ingredients of Southeast Asian nutraceuticals, yet comparative data generated under identical laboratory conditions are scarce. This study screened nine botanical extracts—green tea (Camellia sinensis), broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. italica), Brussels sprout (B. oleracea var. gemmifera), pecah beling (Strobilanthes crispus), Sabah snake grass (Clinacanthus nutans), soursop leaf (Annona muricata), noni (Morinda citrifolia), roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa) and a mixed-berry extract—under identical conditions in a single laboratory. Free-radical scavenging was measured with the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and 2,2′-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) assays. Green tea extract was the most potent scavenger (half-maximal inhibitory concentration, IC50, 0.8 mg/mL in DPPH and 2.4 mg/mL in ABTS), followed by soursop leaf (1.9 and 5.2 mg/mL). Sabah snake grass, mixed berries, roselle, noni and pecah beling formed a moderate group at roughly one-twentieth to one-fortieth of the potency of green tea, while the two brassica extracts showed little direct scavenging at the solubility limit. Rankings were concordant between the two assays. Untargeted liquid chromatography–quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry of the brassica extracts returned profiles dominated by primary metabolites, consistent with bioactives that act by enzyme induction rather than by direct radical quenching. The results give formulators a uniform single-laboratory basis for comparing these ingredients, and show that chemical scavenging assays alone understate the contribution of brassica extracts.

Many widely used nutraceuticals, including curcuminoids, polyphenols, carotenoids, coenzyme Q10 and labile vitamins, reach the systemic circulation poorly after oral intake because of low solubility, gastrointestinal degradation, efflux and presystemic conjugation. Lipid-based nanocarriers have become the leading commercial solution. This narrative review examines liposomes, niosomes, solid lipid nanoparticles, nanostructured lipid carriers, nanoemulsions, micelles and self-emulsifying systems for nutraceutical delivery. It explains the three mechanisms by which lipid excipients raise absorption (mixed-micelle solubilisation, lymphatic transport and modulation of enterocyte handling), compares carrier classes on composition, stability and manufacturability, and examines the conversion of liquid dispersions into stable powders, using spray-dried liposomal vitamin C as a worked example. Human pharmacokinetic studies are tabulated and critically appraised. Reported gains range from about 1.3-fold to more than 180-fold, but this spread reflects study design as much as technology: measurement of total rather than unconjugated analyte, unequal comparator doses, small industry-funded cohorts and few head-to-head comparisons. In the most rigorous equal-dose comparison of eight curcumin formulations, only micellar and cyclodextrin products outperformed native curcumin. The review proposes critical quality attributes for lipid-based ingredients and a minimum reporting standard for future bioavailability trials.

A 2022 systematic review concluded that Orthosiphon stamineus (misai kucing, Java tea) could be an antidiabetic agent, based on 31 studies that were almost entirely in vitro or in animals. This review examines their translation to people. No randomised trial of O. stamineus on glucose or HbA1c was found. The only human clinical data cited for diabetes came from multi-herb prescriptions, and the only placebo-controlled human trial identified found no diuretic effect. Converted by body surface area, the effective rat doses equal 4.8 to 19.4 g of extract a day for a 60 kg adult, 3 to 13 times the highest daily dose in the European Medicines Agency draft monograph; only the mouse studies were within or near that range. The α-glucosidase assays that showed extracts outperforming acarbose used an enzyme of unstated origin, against which acarbose was weak, as is typical of the yeast enzyme. Toxicity in animals was low, but lipophilic extracts and eupatorin inhibited CYP3A4 and CYP2D6, and the European monograph contraindicates use where fluid intake must be restricted, as in advanced kidney disease. O. stamineus should not be presented as an antidiabetic until standardised extracts at monograph doses are tested in randomised trials.

Blue is the colour the natural palette does not easily supply, and regulatory pressure to retire petroleum-derived dyes has made the gap commercially urgent. Butterfly pea (Clitoria ternatea L.) is the most credible natural blue available to food and supplement manufacturers, because its pigments are polyacylated anthocyanins, the ternatins, whose long aromatic side chains hold the blue quinonoid base stable across a pH range in which ordinary anthocyanins fail. This review draws the published work together from the formulator’s end rather than the chemist’s: what the pigment does between the extraction vessel and the finished pack. Three conclusions follow. First, the stability optimum is near neutrality, not in acid — the half-life of the blue form at pH 7 and 4 °C is reported at 334 days against 51 days for the flavylium cation at pH 0.5, which inverts the rule of thumb carried over from red anthocyanins and makes beverage pH the single most consequential formulation decision. Second, colour stability and antioxidant capacity do not track together: radical-scavenging activity falls away above pH 7 while visible blue persists to pH 10, so a product that still looks right may no longer carry the activity its positioning claims. Third, encapsulation is now well characterised for this extract, with maltodextrin-based wall systems retaining above 90% of anthocyanins through spray drying, yet almost all of that work reports retention at the point of manufacture rather than through the shelf life of a real matrix. The review also sets out a regulatory asymmetry that the technical literature has largely ignored: butterfly pea flower extract is a listed colour additive in the United States with permitted uses widened in 2025, while in the European Union the dried flower has met a safety objection grounded in its cyclotide content rather than in its pigments. Extract specifications that address only anthocyanin content therefore leave the binding commercial constraint unmeasured.

Multi-ingredient nutraceutical powders are widely marketed for skin health, yet most are characterised against a single enzyme target, and few are evaluated as the finished, reconstituted article that a consumer actually ingests. We report an integrated in vitro characterisation of Lipo Crystal, a spray-dried sachet powder combining liposomal vitamin C with pineapple and white tomato extracts. The reconstituted matrix was assayed against four enzymes and two redox endpoints, and the finished powder was characterised for proximate composition, microbiological quality and toxic element content. Xanthine oxidase inhibition rose from 47.03 ± 1.40 % to 76.47 ± 0.50 % across 10–500 µg mL⁻¹, crossing the half-maximal threshold within the tested range at a reported half-maximal inhibitory concentration of 62.29 µg mL⁻¹. Collagenase inhibition rose from 56.12 ± 1.90 % to 70.45 ± 0.60 % over the same range, already exceeding half-maximal inhibition at the lowest concentration tested, which bounds its half-maximal concentration below 10 µg mL⁻¹. At 10 mg mL⁻¹ the matrix inhibited tyrosinase by 93.82 %, nitric oxide generation by 91.60 % and hyaluronidase by 89.95 %, and radical-scavenging capacity gave a half-maximal concentration of 46.52 µg mL⁻¹. The reconstituted matrix measured 392.7 ± 52.36 nm with a polydispersity index of 19.0 ± 6.3 % and a zeta potential of −1.4 ± 0.7 mV. The finished powder met microbiological limits, with an aerobic plate count of 220 cfu g⁻¹ and Escherichia coli, total coliforms, yeasts and moulds all below the limit of quantification, and arsenic, lead and mercury were each below quantification. The concurrence of xanthine oxidase inhibition with a conventional dermal-enzyme profile is the distinguishing feature of this matrix and suggests a combined dermal and purine-metabolic positioning rather than a single-target cosmeceutical one. Two methodological caveats are stated explicitly: the surface charge is not resolved from zero and therefore indicates an absence of electrostatic stabilisation, with stability attributable to steric rather than charge effects; and an intermittent micron-scale scattering population shows that the intensity-weighted diameter describes the whole reconstituted matrix rather than its vesicles. In the absence of reference inhibitors, these findings are hypothesis-generating and require controlled confirmation.

Spray drying with carbohydrate, gum and protein wall materials is the dominant route for converting botanical extracts into powders for supplements and functional foods. Most studies, and recent reviews of wall materials, judge success by encapsulation yield, encapsulation efficiency and particle morphology measured immediately after drying. For products sold in hot and very humid regions, where stability testing is performed at 30 degrees Celsius and 75 per cent relative humidity, these measures say little about shelf life. This narrative review reframes wall-material selection around storage performance. It explains how water sorption and the glass transition determine stickiness, caking and chemical degradation; compares maltodextrins, gum arabic, starches and proteins by their stability-relevant properties, including halal and supply considerations; and examines what encapsulation efficiency, moisture content and flow indices do and do not show. A recent elderberry study is used as a worked example: its preferred powder had a Carr index of about 27 and a Hausner ratio of 1.38, classed as poor flow by pharmacopoeial criteria, and no storage test was performed. A testing sequence combining sorption isotherms, glass transition measurement and climatic-zone storage in the final pack is proposed, with a minimum reporting standard.