Biological Efficacy and Application of Essential Oils in Foods-A Review

Food contamination with pathogenic microbes have increased dramatically during the last few decades, and going to be a major public health concern in many developing countries. Foodborne pathogens cause severe diseases to human beings including infants. Although a large number of foodbornepathogens exist, the overall increase in the number of infections is of relatively few emerging serotypes and phage types. A variety of foodborne pathogens have risen and fallen within large geographic regions, associated with several meta-outbreaks. Recently the emergence of resistance of foodborne pathogens to the antimicrobial drugs appears to pose a particular health risk. Several reports have indicated that infection due to the consumption of food contaminated with foodborne pathogens is associated with increased risk for invasive illness, and death. In general, antimicrobial drug resistance occurs frequently in zoonotic foodborne pathogens and is largely promoted by using antimicrobial drugs in food practices. Foodborne pathogens have become a matter of great concern because of their rapid dissemination and their ability to readily acquire additional resistance traits to other clinically important antimicrobial drug classes. There has been an increasing interest worldwide on versatile potential of natural products in controlling foodborne pathogens in food commodities using essential oils, especially from plant origin. This review deals with the novel findings on essential oils and their compounds for their possible applications in food industry against the foodborne pathogens.A reliable amount of description on the practical applications of essential oils in food practices has been described. We have also described the chemical nature and mode of action of essential oils. A brief summary on the use of essential oils in food system as future perspectives has also been discussed. Although an adequate information from literature is presented, this review mainly focusses on the food application of essential oils and their active compounds as natural antimicrobial agents.