Food Hydrocolloids as Matrices for Edible Packaging Applications

Abstract Food hydrocolloids are widely used in the food industry as thickening and gelling agents, emulsifiers, stabilizers, or encapsulating agents. Therefore, they play a relevant role in different food industries, such as dairy, confectionery, sauces, meat products, or bakery. Likewise, in the last decades their usefulness as matrices of edible coatings or packaging materials has been demonstrated. Thus, food hydrocolloids have been used to increase the food shelf life of different food products, such as fresh-cut fruit, meat, cereal flakes, or seafood. These findings are directly related with the ability of these biomatrices to reduce the moisture transfer between different food phases and the oxygen transfer from the environment, or with the antimicrobial activity when they act as carriers of active agents. Nowadays, the efforts of the scientific community are focused on the improvement of the physicochemical properties of proteins and polysaccharides by using both traditional and novel technologies (emulsified matrices or composites, nanotechnology, etc.). This chapter reviews the most recent advances in edible packaging applications of food hydrocolloids taking into account both polysaccharide- and proteins-based materials. Therefore, the production techniques, the different strategies to improve functional properties, and the last applications of these materials are reviewed in a comprehensive way.