Plant antimicrobial polyphenols as potential natural food preservatives.

The growing demand for natural food preservatives in the last decade has promoted investigations on their application for preserving perishable foods. In this context, the present review is focused on discussing the prospective application of plant extracts containing phenolics or isolated plant phenolics as natural antimicrobials in foods. Plant essential oils are outside the scope of this review since utilization of their antimicrobial activity for food preservation has been extensively reviewed.