Abstract
Background: Stabilization and controlled delivery of volatile, hydrophobic, and chemically labile compounds remain major challenges in food formulation, preservation, and packaging. β-Cyclodextrin (β-CD) and selected derivatives are versatile supramolecular carriers that form reversible host–guest inclusion complexes, improving solubility, reducing volatility, increasing resistance to oxidation and thermal degradation, and regulating release. Scope and approach: This review critically evaluates β-CD inclusion systems through a cross-scale framework linking host-guest recognition and complex stability with carrier architecture, food-matrix-dependent release, product-level functionality, and translational constraints. Rather than re-cataloguing preparation methods or individual technologies, evidence from flavour delivery, active packaging, food preservation, and bioactive stabilization is comparatively analysed to identify transferable design relationships and methodological limitations. Underexplored applications, including 3D food printing, fermentation, contaminant removal, and cellular agriculture, are considered separately as evidence-gap areas rather than established technological domains. Key findings and conclusions: β-CD-enabled systems can achieve encapsulation efficiencies approaching 99%, markedly improve the apparent solubility and stability of sensitive compounds, and support antioxidant, antimicrobial, controlled-release, and shelf-life-extension functions. Recent platforms integrate inclusion complexes with nanofibers, films, aerogels, nanosponges, nanoemulsions, and cyclodextrin-based metal–organic frameworks to enable responsive release, barrier enhancement, and freshness monitoring. Emerging uses include interfacial structuring, scavenging of fermentation inhibitors, selective contaminant sorption, and delivery in edible scaffolds, although evidence remains application-dependent and limited for cellular agriculture. This review applies to a cross-scale framework in which host-guest molecular compatibility determines complex stability, carrier architecture governs transport and release, food-matrix conditions modify these processes, and their interaction determines product-level performance and translational feasibility.