It has long been known that starch as a raw material is of strategic importance for meeting primarily the nutritional needs of people around the world. Year by year, the demand not only for traditional but also for functional food based on starch and its derivatives is growing. Problems with the availability of petrochemical raw materials, as well as environmental problems with the recycling of post-production waste, make non-food industries also increasingly interested in this biopolymer. Its supporters will point out countless advantages such as wide availability, renewability, and biodegradability. Opponents, in turn, will argue that they will not balance the problems with its processing and storage and poor functional properties. Hence, the race to find new methods to improve starch properties towards multifunctionality is still ongoing. For these reasons, in the presented review, referring to the structure and physicochemical properties of starch, attempts were made to highlight not only the current limitations in its processing but also new possibilities. Attention was paid to progress in the non-selective and selective functionalization of starch to obtain materials with the greatest application potential in the food (resistant starch, dextrins, and maltodextrins) and/or in the non-food industries (hydrophobic and oxidized starch).

The aim of this research was to obtain new, ecological products with emulsifying properties based on potato maltodextrins and fatty acids and to prepare stable emulsions with the obtained esters as emulsifiers. The esterification of potato maltodextrin with different degrees of saccharification using oleic acid (model reaction) and free fatty acids from oil hydrolysis in the presence of lipases from Thermomyces lanuginosus and Aspergillus oryzae as biocatalysts was carried out. The reaction yielded products with degrees of substitution (DS) ranging from 0.017 to 1.35. Physicochemical analysis of the obtained products (FT–IR, NMR, morphological studies, and solubility measurements) was carried out. The occurrence of the reaction was confirmed, and the influences of the degree of saccharification of maltodextrin, the type of lipase used, and the reaction conditions on the degree of substitution obtained and the related product properties were evaluated. Oil-in-water emulsions were prepared on the basis of the obtained esters, which were then visually assessed. The lowest creaming index (0.0%) was obtained for the emulsion prepared from low-saccharified maltodextrin ester with DS = 0.038.