Themed collection Food as Soft Matter

This review covers simple and complex coacervation in plant proteins: legume, oil seed, and cereal. We grouped the proteins by sources and properties and examined how processing affects phase behaviors.

The colon structure, factors significant to gut health, the fate of diet digesta entering the colon, and the functions of delivery systems in the colon.

Cyclizing two amino acids (CDAs) via condensation produces molecular gelators in numerous solvents, while mixtures of four or more non-gelling CDAs solidify canola oil after heating and cooling with altered microstructures from individual CDAs.

In this paper, we present a numerical model that can describe the pore formation/cavitation in viscoelastic food materials during drying.

This study presents a rigorous mechanical characterisation investigation on milk chocolate with varying porosities, at different temperatures and strain rate levels.

In this article, a shape-dependent model for the interpretation of USAXS data is proposed. CNPs are modeled as polydisperse parallelepipeds, and the aggregates are characterized by fractal dimensionality.

Combination of wax oleogelation and capillary suspension gels oil. With no water, dispersed particles prevent wax oleogel formation; water load is key. Capillary suspensions increase oleogel firmness; this depends on particle polarity.

Gels of multicomponent building blocks offer promising opportunities for the development of novel soft materials with unique and useful structures and properties.

Saliva's response to extensional flows determine bolus cohesion during swallowing, growth of spit bubbles, stringiness observed during drooling or licking, and the size of drops released by coughing, singing, sneezing, or speaking.

Multi-responsive glycyrrhizic acid shows varying and intriguing adsorption behaviors, structural reassembly, and interfacial rheological responses at liquid interfaces.

Jellyfish were soaked in aqueous mixed solvents (ethanol or acetone) and were found to undergo gel collapse below a critical solvent polarity. Strong gel collapse resulted in both microstructural re-arrangements and mechanical reinforcement.

The aim of this study was to assess how transglutaminase (TG) impacts the microstructure, texture, and rheological properties of fermentation-induced pea protein emulsion gels.

Water-in-oil emulsions are a potential way to achieve low-calorie foods. We investigate compositional ripening in two water-in-oil Pickering systems using confocal microscopy and particle tracking, revealing two contrasting end fates.

Real mayonnaise and vegan mayo display striking differences in dispensing behavior, manifested in the size and shape of drops, neck shape, and pinching dynamics often not revealed by the characterization and analysis of shear rheology.

We combine drop breakup simulations with adsorption kinetics to gain insight into how emulsifier dynamics control turbulent drop breakup.

Changing rheological (G′, G′′, longitudinal viscosity) and acoustic (Sound velocity) properties of anhydrous milk fat as it cools from the melt to a soft solid.

As the potential well between droplets becomes deeper, nanoemulsions show higher  and σ_y. By superposition of rheological properties of nanoemulsions, a master curve is constructed for dynamic moduli at different volume fractions and interactions.

By interpreting bacterial cellulose (BC) through grafting chitosan with lauryl gallate (CT-LG), it exhibited exceptional hydrophobic properties while also employing a sustainable approach to chemical synthesis as a green packaging material.

By considering the hydrolysates of soy protein produced by trypsin as an example, the emulsion stabilizing properties of plant-based protein fragments, and their conjugates with polysaccharides, have been investigated theoretically.

On tea infusions, the formation of a transparent, shiny film which cracks upon disturbance can often be observed. The strength of this film depends on water hardness and tea variety.

Emulsion gels as soft materials were formulated by insoluble soybean fiber (ISF) assembled from okara in this study.

The enzymatic milk gel is a weak physical gel of casein micelles that displays strain-softening and strain-hardening before failure during stress sweep tests.