The quality of food products depends on their organoleptic, nutritional, and microbiological properties, all of which are subject to dynamic changes during storage and distribution. Such changes are mainly due to interactions between foods and their surrounding environment or to migration between different components within a composite food.
In the last 20 years, there have been over 45 edible packaging patents. During 2006 alone, there were 174 scientific papers focused on edible packaging. Most work covered in these papers deals with water vapour transfer. However, there are other potential applications. For example, edible packaging can be used to encapsulate flavour and aroma compounds, antioxidants, antimicrobial agents, pigments, ions that prevent browning reactions, or nutritional substances such as vitamins.