Analytical Approaches for Analysis of Safety of Modern Food Packaging: A Review

Abstract

Nowadays, food packaging is a crucial tool for preserving food quality and has become an inseparable part of our daily life. Strong consumer demand and market trends enforce more advanced and creative forms of food packaging. New packaging development requires safety evaluations that always implicate the application of complex analytical methods. The present work reviews the development and application of new analytical methods for detection of possible food contaminants from the packaging origin on the quality and safety of fresh food. Among food contaminants migrants, set-off migrants from printing inks, polymer degradation products, and aromatic volatile compounds can be found that may compromise the safety and organoleptic properties of food. The list of possible chemical migrants is very wide and includes antioxidants, antimicrobials, intentionally added substances (IAS), non-intentionally added substances (NIAS), monomers, oligomers, and nanoparticles. All this information collected prior to the analysis will influence the type of analyzing samples and molecules (analytes) and therefore the selection of a convenient analytical method. Different analytical strategies will be discussed, including techniques for direct polymer analysis.

Progresses in Food Packaging, Food Quality, and Safety—Controlled-Release Antioxidant and/or Antimicrobial Packaging

“…Migration modeling shows nanomaterials are immobilized in a polymer matrix [ 263 ]. Another problem consists in the detection of possible food contaminants from the packaging origin on the quality and safety of fresh food [ 252 ]. Food migrants/contaminants can be classified as intentionally added substances (IAS) to improve quality and safety of packaging and food, such as AC, antioxidants, antimicrobials (acetic acid, chitosan, catechin, gallic acid, lysozyme, and nisin), nanoparticles (see text and tables above), and non-intentionally added substances (NIAS), such as impurities from chemicals or primary materials; contaminants in the case of recycled materials; degradation products from polymer matrix and polymer additives; products of reaction between polymer components or reaction of polymer with food; monomers, oligomers, and printing inks, polymer degradation products, and aromatic volatile compounds (the last may compromise the safety and organoleptic properties of food).…”

Tackling the toxics in plastics packaging

“…But there is more: Apart from the substances that are intentionally used in the manufacture of plastics, all plastics also contain so-called non-intentionally added substances, or short NIAS, which have no technical function in the finished plastic material, but that are nevertheless present and can also migrate into food or the environment [ 18 – 20 ].…”

Glycan Nanobiosensors

“…Life systems inspire humanity to apply nanotechnology to solve biologic and medical problems and to construct new nanomaterials and devices [ 9 ]. Nowadays, NPs ( Figure 2 ) are well established in different fields of everyday human life [ 21 ], for example, in electronic devices (amplification of immunosensors’ sensitivity) [ 22 , 23 , 24 ], medical applications (as imaging tools, drug delivery carriers, nanosensors and gene-delivery therapy [ 9 , 25 , 26 ]), the cosmetics [ 27 ] and food industries [ 28 ]. Further, NPs with engineered surface characteristics may transfer through the cell membranes without causing their perturbations, thereby allowing direct interactions with cell components [ 29 ].…”