Antimicrobial films for food applications: a quantitative analysis of their effectiveness

TLDR: In a recent review as mentioned in this paper, the results suggest that antimicrobial films still face limitations and are perhaps still best viewed as part of a hurdle strategy to provide safe foods, and that even for antimicrobials such as nisin, chitosan or antimicrobial acids with a long history of studying their incorporation into antimicrobial film, the majority of results centred around 2 log10 reductions.

Abstract: A tremendous effort has been made over the last decade to develop and test films with antimicrobial properties to improve food safety and shelf life. This review catalogues and analyses the outcome of these research efforts. The bacteriocin nisin was the antimicrobial most commonly incorporated into films, followed by food-grade acids and salts, chitosan, plant extracts, and the enzymes lysozyme and lactoperoxidase. The methodologies for measuring antimicrobial activity of both edible and inedible films varied considerably among the studies. Results, defined as the difference in the log10 colony-forming unit (CFU) of a test organism exposed to a control film and the log10 CFU of the organism exposed to the antimicrobial film, ranged from 0 to 9 for many of the antimicrobials tested. Even for antimicrobials such as nisin, chitosan or antimicrobial acids with a ‘long’ history of studying their incorporation into antimicrobial films, the majority of results centred around 2 log10 reductions. The results suggest that antimicrobial films still face limitations and are perhaps still best viewed as part of a hurdle strategy to provide safe foods. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.