Recent Advances in Sustainable Antimicrobial Food Packaging: Insights into Release Mechanisms, Design Strategies, and Applications in the Food Industry

Abstract

In response to the issues of foodborne microbial contamination and carbon neutrality goals, sustainable antimicrobial food packaging (SAFP) composed of renewable or biodegradable biopolymer matrices with ecofriendly antimicrobial agents has emerged. SAFP offers longer effectiveness, wider coverage, more controllability, and better environmental performance. Analyzing SAFP information, including the release profile of each antimicrobial agent for each food, the interaction of each biomass matrix with each food, the material size, form, and preparation methods, and its service quality in real foods, is crucial. While encouraging reports exist, a comprehensive review summarizing these developments is lacking. Therefore, this review critically examines recent releaseantimicrobial mechanisms, kinetics models, preparation methods, and key regulatory parameters for SAFPs based on slow-or controlled-release theory. Furthermore, it discusses fundamental physicochemical characteristics, effective concentrations, advantages, release approaches, and antimicrobial and preservative effects of various materials in food simulants or actual food. Lastly, inadequacies and future trends are explored, providing practical references to regulate the movement of active substances in different media, reduce the reliance on petrochemical-based materials, and advance food packaging and preservation technologies.

Thermal-Driven Curcumin Release Film with Dual-Mode Synergistic Antibacterial Behavior for Efficient Tangerine Preservation

“…Meanwhile, the long-lasting antibacterial ability can be achieved by the thermal-controlled release of curcumin. ,, As shown in Figure d, all the films doped with curcumin showed a sustained release phenomenon. The final release curcumin concentrations order of those films was CS/Cur > CCF 0.05 > CCF 0.1 > CCF 0.15 > CCF 0.2 , and the release rate constant ( k ) of Cur-based films decreased with the increase of doped Fe-MoO x (SI, Figure S13 and Table S1), which indicated that the doping Fe-MoO x could prolong the release time of curcumin, achieving long-lasting antibacterial effect.…”