Antimicrobial and Antioxidant Active Food Packaging: Technological and Scientific Prospection

Background: Antimicrobial and antioxidant packaging play an important role in the food industry by ensuring food quality and prolonging the product’s shelf life. Therefore, this scientific survey covers the technological domain in the active food packaging development processes and types of packaging. Methods: This paper aims to provide a review of patents and scientific publications on active packaging with antimicrobial and antioxidant properties in order to show technological advances in this field of knowledge and its applicability in the food industry. Results: The patent review indicates an increase in the number of documents deposited in recent decades regarding various types of packaging formulations, particularly active packaging to preserve foods and their shelf life. In the last few decades, the scientific publication also includes several studies concerning the development of active food packaging using natural products with antimicrobial and antioxidant proprieties. Overall, the results show the advantages of incorporating natural products into polymer matrices to develop industrial packaging, providing a safe and high-quality food product to the consumer. On the other hand, the review also highlighted lack of cooperation between inventors and companies of active packaging development. Conclusion: Further study in this regard would help provide data form research and patents on the active food-packaging field as well as economic issues, indicating the global development scenario of this innovative area.