Research on Food Packaging Materials: Development of Innovative Polymers and Analytical Characterization
A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Materials Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2026 | Viewed by 592
Special Issue Editors
Interests: chromatography; mass spectrometry; solid phase microextraction
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: chromatography; mass spectrometry; environmental chemistry
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Modern lifestyles have changed consumers’ eating habits, and there is now a preference for foods that can be stored at home for a long time after purchase, sometimes fully or partially prepared. Among these, a significant portion is based on meat and fish, perishable foods whose shelf life depends on many variables such as microbial growth, enzymatic activity, oxidation processes, and package type. This means that processing methods and protective packaging that preserve quality for a long time are highly necessary.
The food industry has used polymeric materials to wrap edible products for the past 50 years, and so food packaging contributes almost 50% of the total weight of global plastic waste production, posing a serious threat to the environment.
Furthermore, additives are commonly used during the production of packaging materials, such as phthalic acid esters (phthalates, PAEs), which are widely recognized as dangerous to human health, acting as endocrine disruptors with potentially carcinogenic, teratogenic, and mutagenic properties. In fact, being only physically linked to the polymer, PAEs can be easily released into the environment and in the foods they contain.
For these reasons, the development of alternative, safe, and biocompatible packaging materials to increase food’s shelf-life is a topic of great interest for the scientific community.
It is a pleasure to invite you to contribute a research article, communication, or review to this Special Issue dedicated to “research on food packaging materials” with a special focus on the chemical characterization and preservative properties of the developed materials (e.g., bioactive polymers) by means of high-performance analytical techniques.
Dr. Nicoletta De Vietro
Dr. Jolanda Palmisani
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- food packaging materials
- chemical contamination
- analytical characterization
- food preservative properties
- innovative polymers
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