The invention relates to a process for producing a herbal tea product in aqueous or powdered forms including polyphenol rich herbal tea extract and hydrophobic plant sterols/stanols with improved water disbersibility. The process comprises of dispersing or otherwise suspending hydropobic plant sterols into a delivery medium of emulsifier containing aqueous polyphenol rich herbal tea exract, or of water and emulsifier mixture that would blend with tea extracts afterwards, resulting mixture are exposed to impact forces by creating high shear to produce micropaticles below 30 µm preferably below 10 µm which would substantially follow bell curve distribution. Optionally, the process may require heating, however heating is desirable for pasteurization to prevent microbial spoilage. Thus the process may need one or more heating steps and this step may be applied before or after homogenization, or heating both. In a further embodiment, this aqeuous homogenized dispersion compirimising mainly plant sterol and herbal tea extract is either spray dried, or freeze dried, or vacuum dried to get water dispersible sterol fortified powder tea. This plant sterol enriched herbal tea extract and its dried form can be used in the preparation of pharmaceutical or nutritional products and beverages and the medical applications of such products
展开▼
