Antibacterial Activity of Nanotechnologically-Coated Materials Approved for Food Contact

One of the main concerns of the food industry is surface microbial contamination. Most used food-contact materials are stainless-steel and, to a lesser extent, aluminum. Unfortunately, both materials are only bacteriostatic, and their surfaces are not bactericidal. This phenomenon is due to morphological and chemical reasons with a consequent effect on consumer’s health and industry costs. In this sense, the lack of effective, reliable, permanent, non-toxic, non-corrosive and ecosustainable sanitizing agents has driven the research to new technological approaches to counteract bacterial contamination in the food industry. In this chapter we summarized the latest commercially available strategies, which have been proposed to reduce/replace the use of toxic and polluting sanitizing agents in food industry such as iodine, biguanide, quaternary ammonium compounds, peracetic acid and sodium hypochlorite and, at the same time, allow a long-lasting effect against bacterial contamination.