Review reveals mechanisms of microbial survival and safety innovations in salted foods, highlighting multi-barrier strategies to balance sodium reduction with pathogen control.
Key Points
To analyze the selective role of salt in food microbial ecology and evaluate emerging technological and biological strategies to achieve sodium reduction without compromising microbiological safety.
Conducted an integrated analysis of microbial population dynamics and survival mechanisms across salted meat, dairy, fish, and vegetable matrices.
Osmotolerant pathogens, including Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, and Clostridium botulinum, survive salt barriers and exhibit cross-protection that elevates thermal resistance.
Next-generation sequencing and metagenomic profiling overcome the underdetection of osmotic-stress-induced viable but non-culturable (VBNC) pathogenic states seen in culture-based methods.
Protective starter cultures, biopreservation, and engineered strains effectively function as complementary components within a multi-barrier system to compensate for reduced sodium levels.