How to Develop a Safe and Natural Food Preservative?

World Food Safety Day (WFSD) celebrated on 7 June 2021 with theme ‘Safe food today for a healthy tomorrow’ stresses that production and consumption of safe food and calls for intensified efforts to prevent foodborne diseases. New study in Process Biochemistry by researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia discovers that fermented pork snack, Nem Chua contains natural bacteria-killing compound that can be used to keep food fresh for longer.

"Scientists have known about these bacteria-killing compounds for many years but the challenge is to produce them in large enough quantities to be used by the food industry”, said Jones, Associate Dean of Biosciences and Food Technology at RMIT.

Actually, Nem Chua compound is colourless, odourless, tasteless and very resilient produces a new type of bacteria-killing compound called Plantacyclin B21AG is one of a group of compounds known as bacteriocins, which are produced by bacteria to destroy rival bacterial strains.

These Bacteriocins form holes in the membranes in target bacteria to kill by leaking out the contents of the cell but they work against one or two types of bacteria and are not very stable in different environmental conditions.

Earlier Nisin was the only licensed food preservative in market but this compound’s temperature and pH sensitive limits its use so Nem Chua compound surviving heat upto 900c for 20 minutes and even remains stable across high and low pH levels can destroy a range of disease-causing organisms commonly found in food including potentially life-threating Listeria and also be used as an antibiotic in human medicine.

With further development and identifying the right growth conditions that produces these compounds in large amounts at industrial scales will be an effective, safe and all-natural solution for both food waste and food-borne disease.



Source-Medindia