Recent Trends in the Application of Sustainable Edible Coatings to Active Food Packaging

Dear Colleagues,

The production of fresh and minimally processed foods has increased exponentially because of the current increase in consumer demand for natural foods. However, each year, an estimated 1.3 billion tons—worth around $1 trillion—ends up rotting in the bins of consumers and retailers, or spoiling due to poor transportation and harvesting practices. As a result, the food industry has been exploring innovative materials and technologies to improve fresh and minimally processed food products’ market impact and reduce food waste. Edible coatings based on different natural materials, such as proteins, lipids, polysaccharides, or combinations of these, offer freshness, quality, and food safety, being an environmentally friendly technology.

For the present Special Issue, entitled “Recent Trends in the Application of Sustainable Edible Coatings to Food Packaging", we invite both original research and review articles related to the current state-of-the-art in edible active matrices with an emphasis on recent trends in reducing food wastes and novel processing technologies. This Special Issue will focus primarily on the following topics:

• novel coating techniques;
• polysaccharide-based edible coatings;
• protein-based edible coatings;
• lipid-based edible coatings;
• novel natural additives;
• different food packaging applications (meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, etc.);
• shelf life analysis;
• active packaging; and
• food wastes.

Prof. Arantzazu Valdés García
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Foods is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.