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Review
. 2024 Aug:190:114548.
doi: 10.1016/j.foodres.2024.114548. Epub 2024 May 29.

Activity and safety evaluation of natural preservatives

Huiying Dong  1 , Yang Xu  1 , Qingqing Zhang  1 , Hua Li  2 , Lixia Chen  3
Affiliations
Review

Activity and safety evaluation of natural preservatives

Huiying Dong et al. Food Res Int. 2024 Aug.

Abstract

Synthetic preservatives are widely used in the food industry to control spoilage and growth of pathogenic microorganisms, inhibit lipid oxidation processes and extend the shelf life of food. However, synthetic preservatives have some side effects that can lead to poisoning, cancer and other degenerative diseases. With the improvement of living standards, people are developing safer natural preservatives to replace synthetic preservatives, including plant derived preservatives (polyphenols, essential oils, flavonoids), animal derived preservatives (lysozyme, antimicrobial peptide, chitosan) and microorganism derived preservatives (nisin, natamycin, ε-polylysine, phage). These natural preservatives exert antibacterial effects by disrupting microbial cell wall/membrane structures, interfering with DNA/RNA replication and transcription, and affecting protein synthesis and metabolism. This review summarizes the natural bioactive compounds (polyphenols, flavonoids and terpenoids, etc.) in these preservatives, their antioxidant and antibacterial activities, and safety evaluation in various products.

Keywords: Essential oils; Food additives; Natamycin; Nisin; Phage; Safety evaluation; Tea polyphenols.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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