Advancing Future Food Preservation with Green Cryoprotective Agents (GCAs) to Mitigate Ice Damage in Freezing

Abstract

The amount of products, especially food, wasted worldwide continues to rise due to poor storage. Freezing approaches have been extended to food-related research to extend the shelf life and preserve the physicochemical properties of food. However, the process involves unavoidable ice crystal formation, growth, and recrystallization, resulting in cryodamage of the stored food. Mitigating the ice-damaging effects often requires the addition of green cryoprotective agents (GCAs) in the preserving medium to reduce and/or prevent ice formation. Certain non-toxic chemicals and materials have been reported to possess anti-icing properties and thus serve as promising GCAs in food and food-related applications. This review presents the development timelines, challenges, limitations, optimization, mechanism, elementary parameters to be considered, and most importantly, toxicity concerns regarding novel GCA materials and molecules in the food industry. Possible future research in the area of food and food industries was summarized.