Food packaging materials are traditionally expected to contain foodstuffs and protect them from deteriorating agents. Although petroleum‐derived polymers have been widely used for this purpose, the rising concern with their nonrenewable and/or nonbiodegradable nature paves the route for the development of greener alternatives, including polysaccharides and polypeptides. The use of these food‐grade biomacromolecules, in addition to fruits and vegetables, provides edible packaging with suitable physical‐mechanical properties as well as unique sensory and nutritional characteristics. This text reviews the chronological development pathway of films based on fruit and vegetable purees, pomaces, and extracts. Recent advances are extensively reviewed with an emphasis on the role that each film component plays in the resulting materials, whose production methods are examined from a technical standpoint and essential properties are compiled and contrasted to their conventional, synthetic counterparts. Finally, this comprehensive review discusses advantages and limitations of edible films based on fruits and vegetables.

This review considers the most recent developments in supramolecular and supraparticle structures obtained from natural, renewable biopolymers as well as their disassembly and reassembly into engineered materials. We introduce the main interactions that control bottom-up synthesis and top-down design at different length scales, highlighting the promise of natural biopolymers and associated building blocks. The latter have become main actors in the recent surge of the scientific and patent literature related to the subject. Such developments make prominent use of multicomponent and hierarchical polymeric assemblies and structures that contain polysaccharides (cellulose, chitin, and others), polyphenols (lignins, tannins), and proteins (soy, whey, silk, and other proteins). We offer a comprehensive discussion about the interactions that exist in their native architectures (including multicomponent and composite forms), the chemical modification of polysaccharides and their deconstruction into high axial aspect nanofibers and nanorods. We reflect on the availability and suitability of the latter types of building blocks to enable superstructures and colloidal associations. As far as processing, we describe the most relevant transitions, from the solution to the gel state and the routes that can be used to arrive to consolidated materials with prescribed properties. We highlight the implementation of supramolecular and superstructures in different technological fields that exploit the synergies exhibited by renewable polymers and biocolloids integrated in structured materials.