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  • Review Article
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Soft condensed matter physics of foods and macronutrients

Nature Reviews Physics volume 1, pages 551–566 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Understanding food properties is paramount for enhancing features such as appearance, taste and texture, for improving health-related factors such as minimizing the onset of allergies or improving the digestibility of nutrients, and for preserving food and extending its shelf-life. This Review discusses the challenges and opportunities offered by analysing foods as soft condensed matter systems. Emphasis is placed on the three main macronutrients constituting the main building blocks of foods: polysaccharides, proteins and lipids. Similarities and differences with synthetic polymers, colloids and surfactants are described. This Review also discusses the lessons that can be learned from soft matter approaches and the extent of their applicability to real foods.

Key points

  • The theoretical tools developed in soft condensed matter physics provide a means to describe foods and macronutrients at scales ranging from angstroms to tens of micrometres.

  • Polymer physics can be used to characterize the properties of polysaccharides and unfolded proteins, whose complex nature poses unusual theoretical questions.

  • Dispersions and gels based on proteins can be described by the physics of colloids and aggregates, and their phase diagrams can be rationalized accordingly.

  • The structural properties of food emulsions and targeted delivery of macronutrients from lipid-based mesostructures can be studied and controlled with the aid of surfactant physics and transport theory.

  • Some experimental soft matter tools are currently underexploited in food science, which calls for further theoretical research in soft condensed matter physics.

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Fig. 1: Overview of the systems discussed.
Fig. 2: Definitions of single-polymer physics.
Fig. 3: Applications of single-polymer physics concepts to protein systems and polysaccharides.
Fig. 4: Physics of colloids and aggregates applied to food systems.
Fig. 5: Topological and geometrical features of some common inverse lipid mesophases.
Fig. 6: Physics of lipid mesophases.

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Change history

  • 24 September 2019

    The name of the publisher in the caption of Figure 3a, was misspelled. It should read ACS not APS. The mistake has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to W. K. Fong and M. Usuelli for discussions and thank A. Diego-González for producing the mayonnaise sample reported in Fig. 1a.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Salvatore Assenza & Raffaele Mezzenga

  2. Departamento de Física Teórica de la Materia Condensada, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Salvatore Assenza

  3. Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Raffaele Mezzenga

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Glossary

Denaturation

Loss of secondary, tertiary and/or quaternary structure of a protein owing to temperature or chemical stress, for example.

Amyloid fibrils

Protein and peptide-based fibrous aggregates with a characteristic cross-ß secondary structure.

Thermal blob

The portion of chain length whose total interaction energy is of the order of kBT.

Hydrolysed

When peptide chains are fragmented into shorter subunits by chemical, enzymatic or thermal stimuli.

Hamaker constant

A quantity with the units of energy characterizing the van der Waals interactions between colloids.

Second virial coefficient

A quantity with units of volume describing the net two-body interactions between two particles; positive and negative values indicate net repulsion and attraction, respectively.

Association kinetics

Dynamic features of binding between particles, usually characterized by suitable rate constants.

Isoelectric point

Value of pH for which partial protonation induces a net zero charge in a molecule hosting several positively charged and negatively charged groups.

Storage modulus

Parameter with the units of pressure quantifying the elastic response of a viscoelastic material to an external stress.

Block copolymers

Macromolecules obtained by covalently joining two polymers with different physico-chemical properties by one end.

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Assenza, S., Mezzenga, R. Soft condensed matter physics of foods and macronutrients. Nat Rev Phys 1, 551–566 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-019-0077-8

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