Advance of stimulus-responsive materials in food packaging and targeted delivery of bioactive compounds: Insight of discoloration and deformation mechanisms

Background

Public health awareness is on an upward trend, emphasizing the growing need for real-time insights into food quality and strategies to extend shelf life while enhancing the bioavailability of bioactive compounds. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop materials suitable for food packaging and targeted delivery systems.

Scope and approach

This article reviews the progress of stimuli-responsive materials in food packaging and the targeted delivery of bioactive compounds, focusing on discoloration and deformation, which respond to humidity, pH, temperature, light, magnetism, and electricity. The response results, applications in food packaging and delivery of bioactive compounds, and advantages and obstacles of different single-stimulus and multi-stimulus responsive materials are summarized. In addition, the challenges and trends in stimulus-responsive materials for food packaging and bioactive compounds delivery are also outlined.

Key findings and conclusions

Humidity- and temperature-responsive materials with discoloration are used in food intelligent packaging, while light- and humidity-responsive materials with deformation are suitable for food active packaging. Targeted delivery can be achieved by employing light-, magnet-, and electrical-responsive materials with deformation, while pH-responsive materials are versatile. Logical algorithms facilitate accurate response prediction, and multiple stimulus responses offer quality monitoring and timely feedback advantages. Multi-stimulus materials responsive to temperature/light/humidity -responsive with discoloration/deformation have potential in food packaging, and pH/light/magnetic with deformation are for targeted release bioactive compounds. Therefore, stimulus-responsive materials have the potential for intelligent food packaging and targeted delivery of bioactive compounds.