The rapid growth of the food packaging field is powered by the ever growing health conscious consumers and demand for fresher and higher quality foods. Active packaging technologies provide solutions for extending products shelf life with specially altered packaging systems. Among the several shelf life enhancer systems, active packaging system for preventing oxidation is discussed in this paper. Oxidation is generally regarded as the main factor in the development of rancidity of fats and oils. The oxidative processes result in the food becoming unacceptable for consumers. Such oxidation is inhibited by exclusion of oxygen and by the presence of antioxidants. First of all, oxygen scavengers made up of substances which chemically or enzymically react with oxygen were developed to remove oxygen. The commercial oxygen scavengers such as “ageless sachet”, “platinum catalyst”, and “glucose/oxidase enzyme” have been greatly discussed in their action mechanisms and applications. The use of antioxidants in packaging manufacture has so far been limited to stabilizing the polymer during the processing or retarding the change of polymer's physical properties during storage when UV irradiated. However, a further benefit derived from incorporation of an antioxidant into the polymer is more interesting for its ability to retard lipid oxidation of the packaged food via slow migration of an antioxidant from the polymer to food. In view of which, in this paper we will review some oxygen scavenger systems as well as antioxidant-impregnated or antioxidant-coated polymer packaging material.

• Kwang Seon Choi(Dept. Food and Biotechnology, Hoseo University)
• Seok In Hong(Korea Food Research Institute)
• Seok Min Son(Dept. Food and Biotechnology, Hoseo University) Corresponding author