Oxygen scavenging systems for food packaging applications: A review

During the last decades, the food industry has seen several changes in packaging technology and applications because of new consumer demands and market trends. These drivers can be summarized as requirements for high quality, freshness, extended shelf-life, and security of food products. Oxygen scavengers, as a type of active packaging, absorb the dissolved oxygen or the oxygen in the headspace to protect the oxygen-sensitive food products against oxidative degradation. In this review, organic and inorganic oxygen scavengers such as iron, ascorbic acid and its derivatives, illumination-activated scavengers, reducible organic compounds, and unsaturated hydrocarbon-based scavengers, including polyunsaturated fatty acids and polybutadiene, have been thoroughly discussed, and the mechanism of action of each system is briefly explained. In addition, some of the issues associated with the applied traditional transition metal catalysts to accelerate the oxidation rate in oxygen scavenging systems are listed, and the results from a recent study directed towards addressing those concerns by applying TiO2 photocatalyst are presented.