New antimicrobial active package for bakery products

The use of essential oils as food preservatives has gained a great deal of attention over the last years. Specifically, the protective potential achieved by their addition to the packaging material has been demonstrated in vitro. Nevertheless, there is very little information available concerning their use with real, complex food and no procedure for quality evaluation is readily available. This manuscript presents a number of alternatives useful for active essential oil-based packaging as well as a procedure for sensory evaluation that can be easily implemented in different food products. The use of a cinnamon-based active package has been proven to increase more than three times the product shelf-life of a complex bakery product with a minimal change in the packaging and no additional manipulation steps. The quality and definition characteristics were not altered by the use of this concept. Product is nowadays in the final steps prior to market introduction.