Food packages serve a number of important functions, including containment and protection of food, maintaining the sensory quality and safety of food, conferring convenience to food and communicating information about food to consumers. Packaging serves a major defence against external hazards and normally gives a high level of protection. However, undesirable interactions between food and packaging materials can give rise to potential problems which effectively can be dealt with by careful design and construction of packages. The most well-known and undesirable interaction is migration of packaging components to the food and the food contact material legislation has been developed to deal with this problem. Besides total migration, specific migration of chemical substances for new developed package materials and food preparation surfaces, cooking and eating utensils, all food contact materials become very important. There is a big problem for especially manufactured and imported cheap plastic utensils.
In addition to safety aspects of food packaging, developing new packaging materials by new technologies to extend the shelf life of foods and to decrease the food waste are very important. Consumers are increasingly demanding improved product quality and longer shelf life, which is putting huge demand on the food and packaging industries. However, traditional packaging concepts are limited in their ability to prolong the shelf life of food. Possible solutions are provided via innovative active and antimicrobial packaging concepts and nanotechnology applications. They can extend the shelf life of a product, improve safety and sensory properties, and thus maintain the quality of the packaged goods