Five major development trends of food preservatives

Food preservation is an ancient topic. Before humans could chemically synthesize food preservatives, they had already found numerous ways to extend the shelf life of food, such as high salt pickling, high sugar honey making, acid, alcohol, smoking, and storage in water or underground.

With the development of the food industry, traditional anti-corrosion methods can no longer meet their anti-corrosion needs. People have put forward higher requirements for food anti-corrosion methods: simpler operation, longer shelf life, and lower anti-corrosion costs. Based on this, the use of chemical products for food preservation has become popular. Early chemical preservatives mainly included highly toxic products such as formaldehyde and nitrates. Later, dozens of chemical synthetic food preservatives such as benzoic acid, sodium benzoate, sodium dehydroacetate, sodium diacetate, etc. were developed.

Preservatives are widely used in food because they can effectively prevent spoilage caused by microorganisms, thereby extending the shelf life of food. It can be said that without food preservatives, there would be no modern food industry, and food preservatives have made great contributions to the development of modern food industry. However, with the advancement of science and technology, people have gradually discovered that chemically synthesized food preservatives pose a huge threat to human health. With the improvement of people's living and consumption levels, higher requirements have been put forward for the safety level of food, and the development of food preservatives will also show new trends:

One is to develop from higher toxicity to lower toxicity and safer direction. The core of human progress is health and harmony. With the increasing demand for health, food safety standards are becoming increasingly strict. Governments around the world are rapidly revising food safety standards to improve food safety and national health, while also using "green barriers" to protect their own food industry and reduce the impact of foreign food on their own food industry. For example, Japan has already completely banned the use of highly toxic sodium benzoate, and foods containing sodium benzoate cannot enter the Japanese market.

The second is the development from chemically synthesized food preservatives to natural food preservatives. Given the safety and other drawbacks of chemically synthesized food preservatives, humans are exploring safer and more convenient natural food preservatives for use. Such as lactobacillus streptomycin, natamycin, red yeast rice extract, etc. from microbial sources; Animal derived lysozyme, chitosan, protamine, propolis, etc; Plant derived agarose oligosaccharides, Eucommia ulmoides, spices, cloves, plum extracts, etc; R-polysaccharides derived from a combination of microorganisms, animals, and plants.

The third is the development from single item anti-corrosion to broad-spectrum anti-corrosion. The widely used food preservatives, whether chemically synthesized or natural, have relatively narrow antibacterial ranges. Some have inhibitory effects on fungi but are ineffective against bacteria; Some only have inhibitory effects on a few microorganisms. So, most food production companies add multiple preservatives to achieve the purpose of preservation. People crave the widespread use of food preservatives that can both kill and inhibit bacteria. Broad spectrum preservatives will become a research direction in the industry.

The fourth is to shift from harsh usage environments to convenient usage. The widely used food preservatives currently have strict requirements for the food production environment, such as sensitivity to pH value and heating temperature of food; Some have poor water solubility; Some odors are too strong; Some cause food to fade and so on. The development trend should be towards food preservatives that do not have strict requirements for the food production environment.

The fifth is the development of high priced natural food preservatives towards lower prices. Natural food preservatives are non-toxic and harmless, which is the development direction. However, the current price of natural food preservatives is high, reaching thousands of yuan per kilogram or even higher, which most food production enterprises cannot afford, such as lysozyme, streptomycin, natamycin, fish protein, and so on. Significantly reducing the cost of natural food preservatives is a prerequisite for the widespread promotion and application of natural food preservatives.