Food
Generally, food grade calcium chloride is mainly used as a firming agent, anti-caking agent, pickling agent, preservative, stabilizer, texturizer, moisture absorber, and low sodium salt in food processing. Its main applications are in bottled water, cheese making, beer brewing, gel with sodium alginate, canned fruits & vegetables and so on.

Bottled water  
Bottled water companies add calcium chloride and other minerals & salts (e.g. magnesium chloride or sulfate, sodium or potassium bicarbonate) in bottled drinking water mainly for the following two purposes:

Impart a taste of clean, sweet and salty to purified water which tastes flat after distilled.
Balance electrolytes in your body after sweat or urinate and therefore avoid overhydrate.
Cheese
Calcium chloride is often added to milk for cheese making. It increases rennet activity, accelerates coagulation and increases curd firmness by slightly raising milk acidity and reacting with protein to hold together.

Beer
Calcium chloride or sulfate is commonly used in beer brewing. The function of calcium ions as follows:

Reduce the pH
Preserve mash enzymes
Avoid mineral deficiencies and improve the hardness of beer water
Remove phosphate and oxalate
Promote yeast growth and flocculation
Bind with the cell wall proteins after absorbed by the growing yeast cells
Chlorine ions can promote the activity of alpha-amylase, improve the activity of yeast, make the beer taste soft, increase the malt flavor, clarify the beer, and stabilize the colloid.

Pickles
Calcium chloride can be used to replace sodium chloride in pickling brine. It adds a salty taste to pickles without increasing sodium intake, helps the cucumbers look nice and maintain firmness, and also speeds up fermentation during the pickling process. Meanwhile, it is environment friendly (2).

Desiccant
With the function of strong water absorption rate, anhydrous calcium chloride is an efficient dehumidifier which absorbs moisture from the surrounding environment and thus reduces the humidity in the sealed packaging, and therefore protects food from moisture during storage.

Fresh vegetables
Preserving the freshness of fruits and vegetables by sprayed or dipped in calcium chloride solution after harvesting is an effective method, which

Slows physiological disorders
Reduces the respiratory strength
Maintains firmness by reacting with the pectin
Delays the loss of Vitamin C
Enhance nutritional calcium level
Used together with calcium propionate and calcium ascorbate to the surface of apples and lemons as an antibrowning agent (3)
Reduces decay
And therefore extend the shelf life of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Low sodium food
CaCl2 is similar to table salt, but it contains calcium instead of sodium. It can be used in food where low sodium is desired.

Other food uses
As a coagulant in tofu making.
gel or spherification with sodium alginate.
For meat tenderization.
Improve protein stability and kneading resistance in wheat flour and as a calcium fortification.
Calcium supplement in dairy products.
As a refrigerant for ice cream and frozen dessert products manufacturing.
Preserve color and texture, retain firmness in canned fruit and vegetables, e.g. processed tomatoes.
Reduce the formation of acrylamide in the production of potato chips and sticks in high-temperature cooking (4) which caused cancer in animals at very high doses. (5)