Encapsulation Strategies for Natural Bioactives in Clean-Label Meat Preservation: A Review

The increasing demand for clean-label meat products has accelerated interest in natural bioactive compounds, including essential oils, plant polyphenols, and bacteriocins, as alternatives to synthetic preservatives. These compounds have the potential to enhance product safety and shelf life while meeting consumer expectations. Many natural bioactives exhibit antioxidant and antimicrobial activities, enabling them to reduce lipid oxidation and inhibit the growth of spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms in meat systems. Despite these benefits, their practical application remains limited by instability, volatility, poor solubility, and undesirable sensory effects. Encapsulation technologies have emerged as effective approaches to overcome these limitations by enhancing stability, controlling release behavior, and improving compatibility with complex meat matrices. This review synthesizes evidence from 154 studies published between 2010 and 2026 on the application of encapsulation technologies, including microencapsulation, nanoemulsions, liposomes, and cyclodextrin-based systems, for natural bioactives in meat systems. Encapsulated bioactive delivery systems are evaluated by integrating spoilage mechanisms, delivery system design, and application strategies. Encapsulation approaches are discussed in terms of structure-function relationships, release behavior, and interactions with meat components. Application strategies, including direct incorporation, edible coatings, and active packaging, are comparatively analyzed based on their functional performance in meat systems. Overall, nanoscale delivery systems are particularly effective in improving the dispersion, stability, and functional performance of hydrophobic bioactives, while controlled-release systems offer prolonged protection but often exhibit reduced predictability when translated from model systems to real meat matrices. Current challenges related to scalability, cost, regulatory constraints, sensory impact, industrial implementation, and the safe design of sustained-release antimicrobial systems are also addressed, thereby providing a framework for the rational development and implementation of effective clean-label preservation strategies in meat systems.