Nanocellulose: Recent trends and applications in the food industry

In the past few years, nanocellulose (NC) has gained wide attention due to its renewability, biocompatibility, bioavailability, and different remarkable properties. Cellulose nanomaterials have been broadly studied as materials having a range of applications including in the food industry. Properties such as high surface area and aspect ratio, rheological behavior, water absorption ability, crystallinity, tunable surface chemistry, and no cytotoxicity and genotoxicity of NC enable it to be used in food applications. Nanocellulosic materials like cellulose nanocrystals (CNC), cellulose nanofibers (CNF), and bacterial nanocellulose (BNC), have distinctive characteristics which can considerably boost various commercial markets such as packaging. NC has various applications in food such as food stabilizers, dietary fibers, thickeners, flavor carriers, suspension stabilizers and can be used to diminish the caloric value of food. It can also be useful for producing fillings, crushes, biscuits cream, ice cream, chips, wafers, soups, puddings, etc. NC gel has good rheological properties which makes it an interesting candidate in food applications. High viscosity even at lower concentrations of NC makes it remarkable as a non-caloric stabilizing agent and as a gelling agent in food applications. The NC materials have great potential to sustainably improve the tensile and barrier properties while being used as nanofillers in packaging film. This review summarizes the results and prospective applications of cellulose nanomaterials in food applications.