ABSTRACT
Nowadays it is well established that the interactions between different macromolecular ingredients (i.e., protein + protein, polysaccharide + polysaccharide, and protein + polysaccharide) are of great importance in determining the texture and shelf-life of multicomponent food colloids. These interactions affect the structure-forming properties of biopolymers in the bulk and at interfaces: thermodynamic activity, self-assembly, surface loading, thermodynamic compatibility / incompatibility, phase separation, complexation and rheological behaviour. Therefore, one may infer that a knowledge of the key physico-chemical features of such biopolymer-biopolymer interactions, and their impact on stability properties of food colloids, is essential in order to be able to understand and predict the functional properties of mixed biopolymers in product formulations.
