Optical sensors are starting to replace traditional analytical methods that use sophisticated instruments because many of their advantages, i.e. simplicity, real-time monitoring, small dimensions and lower cost. Possibility of using senors on the field, demand for smaller sample quantities and naked eye detection are especially important in healthcare, drinking water analysis and in conditions of limited resources. Given the rise of the environmental awareness and the excessive use of synthetic materials that might represent a certain contamination risk, there is a need for using edible and natural components in sensoring devices. In such sensors, curcumin could be used. Curcumin is a pigment, extracted from tumeric, that yields significant pharmaceutical properties, which because of it has been consumed for over two hundred years. Because of its structure, it can exhibit keto-enol tautomerism, which leads to deprotonation, and can undergo complexation with specific ions. Those reactions can make changes in optical properties in pH sensors or other ion-selective optodes. This work discusses chemical and photophysical properties of curcumin and reviews sensor platforms made of biodegradable materials, including curcumin.