The consumption of meals prepared, packaged, and consumed inside and outside the home is increasing globally. This is a result of rapid changes in lifestyles as well as innovations in advanced food technologies that have enabled the food industry to produce more sustainable and healthy fresh packaged convenience foods. This paper presents an overview of the technologies and compatible packaging systems that are designed to increase the shelf-life of foods prepared by cook-chill technologies. The concept of shelf-life is discussed and techniques to increase the shelf life of products are presented including active packaging strategies.
Keywords: cook–chill technology; foods; packaging; shelf-life; sustainability.