Technological Options of Packaging to Control Food Quality

Abstract

The shelf life of perishable foods as meat, poultry, fish, fruit, vegetables and fresh cerealbased products is limited by various factors that generally bring to changes in odor, flavor, color and texture until to their complete unacceptability. Packaging is the main tool to pre‐ vent product deterioration and prolong its shelf life. The package protects the food against physical, chemical and biological damage. It also acts as a physical barrier to oxygen, mois‐ ture, volatile chemical compounds and microorganisms that are detrimental to food. The package has to be considered as an integral part of the preservation system because it pro‐ vides a barrier between the food and the external environment. It is usually a composite item meeting several different needs [1]. What we call the preservation role is a fundamental requirement of food packaging, since it is directly related to the safety of the consumer. Package performance depends on numerous variables, such as the initial food quality, the processing operations, the size, the shape and appearance of package, the distribution meth‐ od and the disposal of packages. Generally specking, the properties which determine their adequacy to meet performance requirements can be grouped into the following categories: mechanical, thermal, optical and mass transport properties. Mass transport phenomena are of great importance to food packaging with plastics, since a polymeric matrix is permeable to moisture, oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and other low molecular weight compounds. Glass and metal packaging materials are not permeable to low molecular weight com‐ pounds, whereas paper-based materials are too permeable. Hence, these last types of materi‐ als do not provide an opportunity for the designer to optimize the barrier properties for various applications. The polymers can provide a wide range (by three or four orders of