Multifunctional Edibles and Their Applications in Food Industry

Abstract

Food packaging industries face enormous challenges regarding the maintenance of foodstuff’s safety and quality and demand minimally processed and safe food to develop packaging ideas. Subsequently, active food packaging concepts are useful and provide certain beneficial functions compared to outdated passive materials, which provide limited protection to foodstuffs against external impacts.For meeting the demand for food protection, multifunctional active methods production is considered to be more operational. Some active packaging formulations are considered multifunctional edibles, which are used for food packaging purposes and protect foodstuffs against other stimuli. Examples of active food packaging are films, coatings, blends, etc. Previous evidence reported that due to microbial changes, massive food damages have occurred. Therefore, from several previous years, many physical and chemical methods have been established that could be used to enhance the food product’s quality and shelf life. Among such procedures, acceptable packaging is a vital feature in their preservation and promoting stages for food products. Therefore, the packaging of food is essential and, in reality, more significant for the quality maintenance of food. As consumer’s demands are increased for the products free from preservation, processed minimally, and active ingredients must be used for packaging in a very minimal amount that only very little quantity of these preservatives come into food contact. In this chapter, the author discussed some important multifunctional edible packaging such as edible polymers, edible films, edible coatings, edible superhydrophobic surfaces, and edible colloids, which are implemented in food industries for enhancement of foodstuffs shelf life and quality.