Application of nanostructured delivery systems in food: From incorporation to detection and characterization

Background: The development of nanostructures for food applications is growing exponentially, due to their potential to improve foods' nutritional and health value as well as foods' shelf-life. However, there is still a lack of information regarding the nanostructures' effects on the complex food matrices and vice versa, leading to some concerns about nanostructures' safety and food quality. One of the reasons is the difficulty to identify and characterize organic nanostructures within food matrices. Scope and approach: This article reports a critical review of some of the most recent applications of organic nanostructures in food products, and focus on the methodologies that can be used to evaluate the food matrix/ nanostructures interactions. The most used techniques for organic nanostructures' identification and characterization in food matrices are presented, and other potential techniques/methodologies are suggested. Furthermore, some suitable techniques to evaluate the effects of nanostructures' incorporation in food products were also described and discussed. Key findings and conclusions: Despite the high number of recent works reporting the application of organic nanostructures in food products and the existence of techniques that can be used for their identification and characterization within food matrices, the standardization of existing methodologies and/or the development of new reliable techniques and methodologies for identification and characterization of organic nanostructures are still needed. Also, it is essential to conduct more studies to assess food matrix/nanostructures interactions, in order to minimize the existing knowledge gap between development of new organic nanostructures and their application in food products.