ABSTRACT
Hydrocolloids can be extracted from common or from exceptional natural sources, such as animal bones and skin, cereal grains, fermentation slime, seaweed, and wounded trees, among others. The available hydrocolloids are either used as food or are used in food products; besides that, gums are also employed for non-food purposes. The classification of water-soluble gums is inconsistent, possibly owing to its casual development over numerous centuries. Indeed, this inconsistency reveals an accumulation of terminologies from various geographical sources applied to a diversity of impure natural substances. Gum constituents are found in about every natural food, frequently accounting for the structural and textural properties of the source plant. In the continuing search for new milk-derived peptides, the focus might shift to the impact of interactions with other food constituents and technological processing procedures on the biological activities of hydrocolloids.
