Novel technologies for food preservation and safety

Novel technologies for food preservation and safety have arisen as a result of consumer’s desire for convenient, ready to eat, tasty and mild processed food products with extended shelf life and maintained quality. Generally, foods are thermally processed to destroy the vegetative microorganisms for food preservation. However, only thermal treatment triggers many unwanted biochemical reactions, which leads to undesirable organoleptic and nutritional effects. Therefore, a number of nontraditional preservation techniques are being developed to ensure food safety and satisfy consumer demand with regard to nutritional and sensory aspects of foods. These technologies, including novel packaging, can extend the shelf life of unprocessed or processed foods by inactivating the enzymes, reducing the food spoiling microbial growth rate or viability without altering the food quality attributes and nutritional value.

The ability of novel biomaterials (e.g., chitosan, PLA) to preserve the quality and nutritional-nutraceutical value of fresh and processed food will be evaluated. For those biomaterials, it will be also assessed the suitability as food packaging on the basis of processing properties (i.e., rheological properties) and of safety related to migration of substances from the packaging material to the packaged food. The effect of antioxidant and antimicrobial substances into the packaging system to delay or prevent microbial growth and/or contaminations during shelf life of the product will be assessed. The tolerability (e.g., lack of cytotoxicity and genotoxicity) in human cell models of gastro-intestinal tract of the food matrices exposed to the selected novel materials (under different time exposure) will be evaluated through suitable methodologies for cell analysis.
Among membrane processes will be used for functional beverages preparation thanks to their high selectivity and low operating temperatures, but also for isolation and purification of specific compounds (such as bioactive compounds) as new ingredients for production of healthy products.

The novel food packaging technologies, besides the basic function of containment is expected to increase the margin of food quality and safety by prolonging the shelf life, by enhancing or maintaining the quality, providing indication and regulating freshness of food products. They also look at environmental sustainability, using biomolecules from sustainable sources and natural bioactive substances that retard oxidation, spoilage, and decay; prevent microbial diffusion; enrich aromas; and contribute to maintaining the general organoleptic characteristics of the product.
The membrane processes will allow to avoid undesirable organoleptic and nutritional effects usually encountered in thermal processes and assuring safety of food.