ABSTRACT
Preserving the quality and safety of food products with a high nutritive value and good shelf life stability are the major objectives of food manufacturers, particularly for perishable food products. Dairy-based hygroscopic food products, including many types of milk powders, are among the main daily consumed foods considered as perishable food products. Keeping the quality and safety of these foods and increasing their shelf life are mainly dependent on their nature, manufacturing steps, packaging materials, packaging conditions, and storage conditions. Packaging materials and packaging processes are vital in the domain of food protection after the manufacturing steps, until the product reaches the consumer. In other words, without good packaging materials, the packaged food product can deteriorate in a short time after the packaging process. Because of this, significant effort has been devoted to developing sustainable, efficient, and eco-friendly food packaging systems. In this regard, active packaging systems are the most important innovative food packaging systems that can offer big benefits to the packaged food products. Active packaging systems play a key role in the avoidance of microbial contamination and biochemical deterioration of the packaged foods, particularly perishable foods, including dairy-based hygroscopic food products like milk powders. However, complete success in these systems is heavily dependent on the selected packaging materials and the compounds that need to be incorporated into the packaging materials to enhance their properties and to turn them into active packaging materials. Therefore, the attention in this chapter will be focused on active packaging systems applied to milk powders. At the end of this chapter, a perspective is given on the future of active packaging materials needed for dairy-based hygroscopic foods.
