**8. Conclusions and outlook**

In summary, cellulose has been used in various food applications fields for decades, and its impact on the food industries has become increasingly important. The porous network, biocompatibility, high aspect ratio, and abundance of hydroxyl groups are advantages of cellulose for use as a functional food component. Cellulose

### *Perspective Chapter: Cellulose in Food Production – Principles and Innovations DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109204*

creates different colloidal conditions such as surface charge, dimensions, crystal structure, solubility, and wettability. The colloidal properties of cellulosic polymers can be controlled by changing the manufacturing parameters or replacing surface hydroxyl groups with the ester groups. In addition, health benefits and functional impacts such as hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic activity and intestinal bioavailability due to cellulose can be affected by colloidal states. Based on the review of major studies related to cellulose in the food industry, it is possible to refer to the following cases for valuable consideration as cellulose-related challenges in the future: (1) the design of functional foods is possible by changing the colloidal states of cellulose, (2) new food properties can be obtained by different colloidal states in food matrix (3) the interaction between cellulose and gut microbiota needs to be further studied and the potential mechanism needs further investigation, (4) the application of nanocellulose in food matrix is increasingly discovered and the potential long-term risk of nanocellulose requires regulatory and safety testing, and (5) the energy consumption and potential environmental pollution should be considered, and new green technologies to extract or prepare different types of cellulose are proposed.
