Nutritional formulas or compositions can be, for instance, infant formulas or also nutritional liquids for toddlers, invalids, elderly people, humans having nutritional deficiencies and/or having a deficient immune system or athletes.
US2006226109A1 relates to a self-contained complete package of ready-to-use baby formula meals. The package comprises a combination of a reservoir, a coupling element; said reservoir comprising a flexible envelope of durable material operable for containing liquid for storage therein, and said coupling element comprising an integrated ergonomic interface formed of plastic and bonded with said reservoir to form a breakable airtight seal that prevents liquid contained in the reservoir from passing the seal until the seal is compromised to form a flow path from the reservoir to an exterior of the food package. Such package is thus designed for holding a ready-to-use baby formula in a sealed flexible reservoir. However, the problems of such package are related to the inconvenient of storing a ready-to-use composition such as a baby formula in the package such as the limited shelf-life of the composition, the hassle to manufacture, the impossibility to vary the dilution of the formula according to the baby's needs, the large reservoir needed for storing the full composition and so on.
In the field of nutritional compositions, preparation apparatuses are known, wherein a preferably powdered composition is provided within a capsule and is dissolved by means of injection of filtered respectively sanitized liquid such as water. Thereby, the nutritional compositions can be prepared on demand from such capsule in a matter of seconds. This solution also overcome the inconvenient of the ready-to-use compositions. The undesired contaminants can also be removed from the injected liquid before the liquid is mixed with the ingredients in the capsule. For this purpose, such apparatus preferably comprises filter means for filtering respectively sanitizing the water.
In recent development, capsules with integrated antimicrobial filter have been introduced into the market in order to ensure the provision of filtered respectively sanitized liquid to the capsule for the preparation of the nutritional composition.
WO2009/092629A1 for example relates to a capsule for use in a beverage production device, the capsule containing ingredients for producing a nutritional liquid when a liquid is fed into the capsule at an inlet face thereof, the capsule being provided with an anti-microbial filter.
WO2010/128051A1 relates to a capsule for preparing a nutritional product including a filter adapted for removing contaminants wherein the filter is formed of a filter unit that comprises a filter membrane and an outlet wall for supporting the filter membrane; the outlet wall comprising at least one liquid outlet communicating with the compartment.
A drawback with the known capsule-based preparation devices is the fact that in addition to the capsules containing the infant formula base, a serving vessel for the instant formula such as a baby bottle has to be provided. Accordingly, the required space for storage and transport of the components necessary for the preparation of the instant formula is relatively large.
Another drawback comes from the fact that the release of a reconstituted liquid composition from a capsule requires a complete dissolution or dispersion of the ingredients/formula with the diluents (e.g. ambient or warm water) and a complete release of the resulting composition from the capsule to the serving bottle.
Another drawback remains the requirement for cleaning and sterilizing serving vessel that is to be carried out after each and/or before each preparation of the nutritional composition.
Therefore, a more convenient solution is sought-after which overcomes these problems.
In particular, it is desirable to enable a facilitated storage and transport of the components of the beverage preparation system. It is also desirable to reduce the number of these components and their volume in order to reduce the environmental impact of the packaging.
It is also an object to remove the need for cleaning respectively sterilization of any major component.
The present invention seeks to address partially or wholly these objects. The invention may also aim at other objects and particularly the solution of other problems as will appear in the rest of the present description.