Biodegradable Whey Protein Edible Films as a New Biomaterials for Food and Drug Packaging

Food packaging extensively uses plastic films and containers of petroleumbasedpolymers for their excellent functional properties and competitive price.plastic packaging has become a central focus of waste reduction efforts, particularlyin aesthetic terms of damage to flora and fauna. presently, consumers requiregreater quality and longer shelf lives for their foodstuffs, while they demand areduction in the quantity of packaging materials used. in the present study, polyethylenglycol(peg), glycerol, and olive oil were incorporated into whey proteinconcentrate (wpc) through emulsification to produce films. whey protein films wereprepared by dispersing 10% whey protein concentrate in tap water and plasticizedwith different levels of glycerol, peg or olive oil. the emulsion films wereevaluated for mechanical properties, water vapor permeability (wvp) and opacity.increasing the levels of glycerol or peg in the films resulted in a decrease inmodulus and tensile strength. increasing glycerol content of the films at oil/proteinratios of 0.2 and 0.4 led to slight increases in elongation. increasing the oil/proteinratio further resulted in a decrease in elongation for all films. no significantdifference in wvp and opacity was observed between films made from mixturesof various proportions of whey protein concentrate-glycerol with increasing peg(addition) at all levels of the plasticizer. these results suggest that a whey proteinbased edible films is a viable alternative packaging process for food and improvementof shelf life.