Food and beverage packaging using naturally occurring things up to modern technologies and its impact

Abstract

Packaging has been with humans for thousands of years in one form or the other. Previously, it was by shaping different materials in to packaging material like glass pottery and paper. Modern food packaging is believed to have begun in the 19th century with the invention of canning. The packaging system by now reach at capable of carrying out intelligent functions (such as detecting, sensing, recording, tracing, communicating, and applying scientific logic) to facilitate decision making to extend shelf life, enhance safety, improve quality, provide information, and warn about possible problems. Basically, packaging has roles like protection, reduce waste, product freshness and enhance sales in a competitive environment. However, the properties of the packaging material, the type of food/beverage to be packaged, possible food/package interactions, the intended market for the product, eventual package disposal, and costs should also considered during packaging since it has a great harm. This review was initiated with the objective to know about food and beverage packaging materials and their impact. The information about food packaging materials and their impact was collected from different publications over the past decade, research reports and databases from different organization were also reviewed. Various on-line sources including Google Scholar were browsed using some important key terms such as food packaging materials, history of food packaging, role of food packaging and the impact.