Resistant Starch Design for Healthier and More Sustainable Foods

Starch is the principal dietary carbohydrate, and its molecular, crystalline, granular, and supramolecular structures strongly influence digestion kinetics, glycemic response, satiety, and microbial fermentation. Current research seeks to increase resistant and slowly digestible starch while maintaining desirable processing, sensory, and nutritional properties. Physical, enzymatic, chemical, and combined modification strategies, including heat-moisture treatment, irradiation, plasma, ultrasound, and green processing, have demonstrated potential across conventional, underused, and by-product-derived starch sources. However, important questions remain regarding how multiscale structural changes translate into gastrointestinal behavior and health outcomes, particularly across food matrices and populations. Recent studies indicate that starch interactions with proteins, lipids, polyphenols, and bioactive compounds can modify enzyme accessibility, postprandial glycemia, fermentation, and gut microbiota composition. Nevertheless, the field still lacks integrated structure–function frameworks that connect processing conditions and starch architecture with validated in vitro, in vivo, and human nutritional outcomes. Further investigation is also needed to reconcile improved digestibility profiles with food quality, scalability, regulatory acceptance, and environmental sustainability.This Research Topic aims to clarify how starch modification alters structure, digestion, fermentation, and nutritional functionality. It will examine the mechanisms through which processing generates resistant or slowly digestible starch, influences glycemic responses and satiety, and shapes gut microbiota and prebiotic potential. The Research Topic will also assess how starch-based matrices can support the controlled delivery of bioactives, improve food quality, and contribute to sustainable food production. Particular attention will be given to linking multiscale characterization with biological outcomes and to identifying reproducible, scalable, and clean-label approaches.To gather further insights into modified starches derived from diverse plant sources, underused crops, and agricultural or food-processing by-products, this Research Topic welcomes studies spanning food chemistry, nutrition, digestion, microbiology, and sustainable processing, including but not limited to the following themes:• Green and clean-label starch modification, including irradiation, plasma, heat-moisture treatment, ultrasound, enzymatic processing, and combined approaches• Multiscale structure–digestibility relationships and links between starch architecture and gastrointestinal behavior• Formation, characterization, and nutritional functionality of resistant and slowly digestible starch• In vitro, in vivo, and human assessments of glycemic response, insulin response, satiety, and metabolic health• Starch–protein, starch–lipid, and starch–polyphenol interactions and their effects on digestion• Gut microbiota modulation, fermentation products, and the prebiotic potential of modified starches• Encapsulation and controlled delivery of bioactive compounds using starch-based matrices• Valorization of starch from by-products and underused crops for healthier and more sustainable foods• Relationships between starch modification, food processing performance, sensory quality, stability, and consumer acceptability• Environmental sustainability, scalability, safety, and regulatory considerations in modified-starch production Topic editors: Wei Liang, Xiangzhen Ge, Monica R. Nemțanu Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83259/resistant-starch-design-for-healthier-and-more-sustainable-foods