Evaluation of edible films with palmarosa oil as active food packaging for kashar cheese

Abstract

Many materials are used to pack the food and food products in order to maintain the quality and freshness of food products. The most common materials are plastic, aluminium, paper and glass. In addition, in cases where packaging with these materials is insufficient to extend the shelf life and maintain the quality standards of food, chemical preservatives are added to the packaging or to the packaging material. However, inevitable loss of quality features and the components important for human health of foods have been observed as a result of these packagings. Furthermore, the use of chemical preservatives, plastic and aluminium wrappers have detrimental effects both on environment and living being. The disposal of most of plastic and aluminium materials used once and take a large space brought environmental pollution. The plastic wastes that are discarded randomly are easily spread to the nature with the effect of the wind. This situation both creates a bad appearance in nature and dissolves these plastics, which take a long time to cause pollution. On the other hand, plastic pollution is observed in our rivers, lakes and seas, and this pollution damages the living creatures living in lakes and seas. It has been proven that some chemical preservatives are harmful for human health and can cause cardiovascular diseases and even cancer in prolonged exposure. For these reasons, consumers do not approve the use of chemical preservatives and do not prefer to buy foods that use environmentally hazardous packaging material, so packaging and preservation methods that have been widely used have been insufficient recently. On the other hand, innovative food preservation methods have not been widely disseminated as they are expensive for producers. When considering all these reasons, manufacturers have turned to new types of packaging systems that are healthier, safer and more cost-effective to protect food products.