Modern trends and techniques for food preservation

Abstract

Food preservation is the process of stopping or inhibiting the spoilage of food that prohibits foodborne diseases while keeping the food’s nutritional value, flavor, and texture. Food preservation plays a vital role in food safety and quality. Food preservation techniques are also helpful in meeting the global food demand as these techniques provide an opportunity to store food for a long time. Food safety techniques, like salting, drying, and fermentation to increase the shelf-life of raw food, have been used since the dawn of humankind, and our ascendants must have used these techniques. A wide range of chemical and biochemical reactions could be the root of food spoilage. So, appropriate preservation is necessary to stock the food for as long as possible without contamination. Primary and fundamental techniques like drying, freezing, pasteurization, biopreservation, and Nanoencapsulation have been instigated to stop or slow down food's chemical and biochemical destruction. Bio-preservatives are now commonly used to meet people’s demand for food preservation as chemical preservatives are rejected. This review summarizes the various physiochemical and microbial components that cause food spoilage and the use of different food preservative techniques like salting, dehydration, freezing, smoking, irradiation, antimicrobial agents, preservatives, and nanotechnology in the food industry during processing and packaging.