Functionalized Starch Biomaterials as a Possible Alternative in the Future of Food Packaging: Advantages, Disadvantages, and Perspectives

Abstract

The excessive consumption of single-use non-biodegradable packaging materials for packaging and transporting food products has increased in recent decades, causing negative impacts on the environment and ecosystems. Starchbased film packaging, because it is biodegradable, could help reduce or diminish this ecological problem since it is safe, cheap, and easy to apply, as well as having the possibility of being modified and/or functionalized to become active packaging with application in the handling, packaging, or transport of food.

Starch is one of the carbohydrates most widely used for this purpose, due to its ease of production and low cost, and unconventional sources of this biopolymer represent novel and interesting options to produce biodegradable films with unique properties. Through the inclusion of bioactive botanical compounds, it is possible to transmit antioxidant and/or antimicrobial properties to them. Therefore, conventional and unconventional sources of starches reported in the literature, which have been used for the production of biodegradable films (functionalized or not), were reviewed, discussing their main physical properties (mechanical, thermal, and permeability) and the effects that are caused in them by adding antimicrobial and antioxidant compounds of botanical origin.

The main limitations and possible applications of these films in food packaging and their current trends in certain food applications were analyzed, since their use could, in the future, help ensure food safety throughout the production chain of these.