What is the new about food packaging material? A bibliometric review during 1996-2016

Background: The first contact that every customer has when buying a food is the packaging, this is responsible for the handling, security, aesthetics and even advertising of the product. Over the years, the food industry has always shown great interest in developing packaging with different materials, some toxic for humans and others not. Scope and approach: This article presents a bibliometric review to identify during the last 20 years, what types of materials have been used to develop food packaging for human consumption, also identifies who are the most focused researchers in this topic, which countries are most interested in the field and how an entire academic social network has been created to identify the future of food packaging. Key findings and conclusions: The results show that the future of food packaging materials includes not only an advanced use of technology, but also a great concern for the care of health and the environment.