Active and Intelligent Packaging of Cheese: Developments and Future Scope

Technological advances and changes in consumer preferences for safer food with better shelf life have led to packaging innovations like smart packaging. Smart packaging systems involve the blend of active and intelligent packaging properties. Most of the smart packaging systems in food sector are mainly focused on fish, sea, food, meat, poultry, fruits and vegetables. With cheese being the major dairy product and its market expanding exponentially, smart packaging systems for cheese are exhaustively addressed in this book chapter. Some of the smart packaging systems pertaining to cheese like antioxidant releasers, antimicrobial packaging, ripening indicator and self-cleaning rinds can hasten commercial acceptance and reliability of cheese products. This book chapter also tabulates the recent data related to production, and consumption of cheese, permitted additives, types of active and intelligent packaging systems explored for cheese and commercial suppliers of smart packaging systems. Along with, future research directions for smart packaging of cheese are also presented.