Colloidal nutrition science to understand food-body interaction

Abstract Background Food can be considered as a natural pool of biopolymer-based colloidal particles diverse in size, morphology, and functionalities. There remains considerable controversy on whether these particles can be absorbed from the intestinal lumen in their intact form even though numerous studies have confirmed the possibility of the absorption of intact nanoparticles across the intestinal wall. Scope and approach In this review, we comprehensively summarize the absorption process of nanoparticles, including mucus-penetrating, cellular uptake, and intracellular transportation. We then perform a detailed study on the absorption of food colloidal particles composed of protein, lipid and carbohydrate. The in-vivo transportation and biodistribution of nanoparticles is then summarized. We also specially discuss the dynamic colloidal aspects of food components which is of great importance to the food digestion and absorption. Finally, we analyze the safety issue of food nanoparticles since an increasing concern on this arises in the past decades. Key findings and conclusions External nanoparticles can be absorbed into cells through endocytosis, which can occur via different mechanisms. Like various fabricated nanoparticles, food colloidal particles potentially can also be absorbed in their intact form. However, previous studies rarely touch upon the absorption, biological fate, potential health effects, and safety of these colloidal particles. Their dynamic formation and disassembly process is also ignored. All these issues are of great importance to the food digestion and absorption mechanism and worth to be thoroughly studied. We attempt to coin all these relevant studies as “Colloidal Nutrition Science”, which aim to understand the food-body interaction from colloidal aspects.