Review: Active food packaging

A great technological development for food packaging has been developed ove r the past few decades to satisfy consumer demands relating to more natural forms of preservation, and methods to control packaging and storage for as surance and food safety. Active packaging is, certainly, one of the most im portant innovations in this field. Active packages are designed to perform a role other than to provide an inert barrier between the product and the o utside environment, using the possible interactions between food and packag e in a positive way to improve product quality and acceptability. Active fo od packaging is a heterogeneous concept involving a wide range of possibili ties which globally can be grouped in two main goals: (i) to extend shelf l ife, and (ii) to facilitate processing and consumption of foods. In the fir st case, active packaging solutions include the systems studied to control the mechanisms of deterioration inside the package (i.e. oxygen scavengers, moisture absorbers or antimicrobial agents). In relation to the second goa l, active packaging allows us to match the package to the properties of the food, to reduce costs of processing, or even to perform some processing op erations in-package or to control the product history and quality. This pap er reviews the different applications of active packaging and their commerc ial use, together with some legal aspects and future trends.