Packaging Materials for Shelf-life Enhancement

Packaging Materials for Shelf-life Enhancement

Shelf life is increased by packaging to satisfy the expectations of the international food market. Using packaging effectively and ensuring that food is safe and satisfies quality requirements throughout its shelf life are the driving forces behind the difficulty of optimizing a package to enable a food reach a specified shelf life. Determining the food package required to achieve a certain shelf life is a difficult but valuable task when evaluating various package alternatives. 

When a product’s quality deteriorates and/or a food safety concern arises, its shelf life has come to an end. The deteriorative factors that determine food shelf life are lipid oxidation, moisture gain or loss, microbial development, and browning (both enzymatic and non-enzymatic). The end of the shelf life is also determined by changes in nutrition content and flavour. These degradation reactions include criteria for distribution, retail use, and consumer use, as well as standards for processing and packaging. Product shelf life can be significantly changed by packaging, which is occasionally determined by food processing. For example, peas packaged using Ultraperf technologies’ VegeSteam gives a shelf life of 10-15 days and it can be steamed in a bag via microwave.  

In order to ensure food quality and prevent food waste, active packaging that can prolong the shelf-life of fresh fruits and vegetables after picking is recommended. This type of packaging has the ability to inhibit the development of bacterial and microbiological diseases as well as postpone the release of ethylene, which speeds up the ripening process of fruits and vegetables after harvest. Recommended technologies include packaging that permits the degradation of ethylene, modified atmosphere packaging, and bioactive packaging. 1