Food and Beverages Packaging

Food Safety and Biosensors

The importance of safety and functionality analysis of foodstuffs and raw materials is supported by national legislations and European Union (EU) directives concerning not only the amount of residues of pollutants and pathogens but also the activity and content of food additives and the health claims stated on their labels. In addition, consumers’ awareness of the impact of ‘functional foods’ on their well-being and their desire for daily healthcare without the intake pharmaceuticals has immensely in recent years. Within this picture, the availability of fast, reliable, low cost control systems to measure the content and the quality of food additives and nutrients with health claims becomes mandatory, to be used by producers, consumers and the governmental bodies in charge of the legal supervision of such matters. This review aims at describing the most important methods and tools used for food analysis, starting with the classical methods (e.g., gas-chromatography GC, high performance liquid chromatography HPLC) and moving to the use of biosensors—novel biological material-based equipment’s.