Food component interactions: a hitchhiker's guide

The interactions between food nutrient constituents/matrixes (e.g., polysaccharides, proteins, and polyphenols) carry on spontaneously and rapidly in the food system (e.g., processing, chewing, and digestion). Understanding the variability of these interactions throughout the food chain/industry in terms of patterns and mechanisms is a challenging task, as the structures of these biomolecules are highly complex, and the binding forms and sites are quite flexible, which hinders their accurate identification and analysis. The comprehensive attribution of modern physical analysis techniques presents enormous strengths: it reveals the chemical composition and physical structure of components, the way in which they interact, their influence on matrix properties, and paves the way for other and more complex interactions in food systems. The aim of this review is to develop a practical, simplified, but unambiguous and comprehensive graphical guide to this demanding topic. It might advance the strategies applied to interaction experiments and analyzes, pinpointing the key home messages disclosed by each representation and proposing effective explanations for their mechanisms of interaction, as well as other key resources in the investigation of these biomacromolecular interactions.