Functional and Engineered Colloids from Edible Materials for Emerging Applications in Designing the Food of the Future

Abstract

Functional and engineered colloids fabricated from edible materials have recently gained a lot of interest for futuristic applications in the field of foods for purposes ranging from microstructure development to delivery of healthpromoting bioactives to manipulation of food-body interactions. This review tackles a very ambitious task of discussing the current understanding of functional colloids within the framework of foods. Physicochemical attributes of several novel complex colloids fabricated from natural, and often, underutilized edible materials are clearly and comprehensively reviewed in this paper. This review not only provides a scientific insight into the advances made in the field of colloid-based food structuring but also touches on the exciting future opportunities in this promising multidisciplinary field.

Food-Grade Pickering Emulsions: Preparation, Stabilization and Applications

“…Zein extracted from corn, a protein with the high percentage of nonpolar amino acids (leucine, alanine, and proline) and a sub-product of the food and ethanol industry, is a natural amphiphilic polymer material, which has been extensively studied in biogels, foods, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industry [ 5 , 41 , 42 , 43 ]. As a kind of water-insoluble food-grade alcohol-soluble protein, zein can form colloidal particles through self-assembly without surface-modification when pH deviated from zein isoelectric point [ 44 ].…”

“…Additionally, soy isoflavones, a unique physiologically active substance, has a cholesterol-lowering function. Some studies have reported that glycinin and β-conglycinin, the two major components of soy protein, show peculiar behavior of globular molecules consisting of a hydrophilic shell and a hydrophobic kernel in aqueous environment [ 5 ]. Therefore, soy protein particles have good emulsifying and gelling properties without additional chemical modification [ 48 ].…”

“…Due to fine size of casein particles, it can keep the natural milk emulsion with improved stability physically. Additionally, casein micelles are functional colloids that can be considered as natural sophisticated delivery systems for micronutrients, such as calcium and phosphate [ 5 ]. But under acidic conditions, casein will precipitate.…”

“…With the development of food emulsion, more rationales of the Pickering stabilized systems were designed and optimized to be applied in food. Some current trends such as how to improve the nutrient bioavailability during food digestion, nanoparticles used as emulsifying agents and Pickering stabilizers were introduced in recent reported reviews [ 4 , 5 , 6 ]. In this work, we mainly introduce the structure and composition of Pickering emulsion, which involving the mechanism of materials in formulating Pickering emulsion and some particles potentially to be used in food-degrade Pickering emulsions such as Janus was also described.…”

Cross‐Linkable Liquid‐Crystalline Biopolyesteramide as a Multifunctional Polymeric Platform Designed from Corn Oil Side‐Stream Product of Bioethanol Industry

“…Valorizing biomass feedstocks and biorefinery downstream products is of utmost importance to improve the viability of a more sustainable economic model . Therefore, in the same way as chemists developing platform molecules from sugar conversion such as hydroxymethylfurfural to synthesize the building blocks of tomorrow, we attempt to extend this concept in developing a sustainable polymer platform that can be easily tunable in terms of architecture and functionality for diverse applications . Among the bioethanol industry side‐stream products like distillers’ grains with solubles and carbon dioxide, corn oil (CnO) figures as one of the major co‐products with an approximated production of 3.6 billion pounds in 2017 in USA .…”