The State-of-the-Art on Exploring Polysaccharide-Protein Interactions and Its Mechanisms, Stability, and Their Role in Food Systems

The compatibility and assembly of dietary soft matter components are crucial in enhancing food products’ stability, nutrition, texture, flavor, and shelf life. This review emphasizes the importance of these interactions, particularly in natural polymers like polysaccharides and proteins, due to their biodegradability, versatility, and sensory contributions. The structural behavior of these polymers exhibits consolable interactions or phase separation depending on molecular arrangements, which is pivotal in determining the microstructure of food matrices. The delicate balance between attractive and repulsive forces facilitates effective self-assembly processes, while weak interactions enable essential structural adaptations. Conversely, excessive intermolecular forces or restricted molecular dynamics can result in functional instability, such as phase separation or structural collapse. This review provides an indepth examination of physical and chemical methodologies to investigate the compatibility and interactions of dietary soft matter components. Techniques such as phase modeling, turbidity analysis, microscopy, thermal analysis, rheology, and spectroscopy are employed to evaluate these materials’ suitability and assembly characteristics. By analyzing these methodologies, the review emphasizes the importance of understanding soft matter interactions for developing functional food products with improved performance and stability. Furthermore, it identifies the current challenges and limitations, offering insights into future directions for advancing food science and technology.