Systems of the W/O/W type continue to be of growing interest to food scientists and technologists for two main reasons. First, there is the possibility of preparing a reduced-fat emulsion product by the replacement of a conventional oil-in-water emulsion by the equivalent W/O/W emulsion having a lower actual oil content but a similar in-mouth perceived texture. Second, there is the capability to encapsulate and protect a sensitive hydrophilic bioactive compound. However, it is always a bottleneck to obtain robust formulations using economically viable ingredients and processing operations. To improve its performance for practical applications in food production, efforts have been made to overcome the difficulties. Herein, we examined the impact of crystallizing the oil phase on the ability of W/O/W emulsions to encapsulate and retain a model hydrophilic bioactive. The results showed that the texture and stability of the W/O/W emulsions prepared in this study were highly dependent on their composition. The concentrations of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic stabilizers had to be optimized to produce emulsions that contained relatively small droplets, (initially) had relatively low viscosities, and that were stable to coalescence and phase separation. Our results provide some useful insights into the formulation of double emulsions for the encapsulation of hydrophilic bioactive agents. In addition, two novel applications of double emulsion have been investigated to provide insight for food production market. One is to protect natural color (anthocyanin) from pH-induced color changes, the other one is to study the impact of fat crystallization on the resistance to osmotic stress, which could be a potential for temperature-triggered release.