**14. Conclusions and future outlook**

Herbs and spices are used for a variety of purposes, including flavoring, coloring, medicinal, and preservation purposes, and their trading is a substantial economic activity globally. Certain popular spices have created a significant demand for certain popular spices all over the world, making spices a research and economic benefit niche. Several spices have been demonstrated to inhibit the growth of some of the most common bacteria in food, such as *E. coli, Salmonella,* and *L. monocytogenes*. Thus, while spices can be used as preservatives, it is necessary to demonstrate their antimicrobial effect on various foods, such as dairy products, fruit, meat, vegetables, and poultry, to ensure a preservative effect comparable to the conventional synthetic preservative effect for each food before settling on the use of spices as preservatives for industrial or commercial purposes. Although whole spices and essential oils have been shown to have good antibacterial activity, their use is still under discussion because it can be expensive to purify them without necessarily increasing the effectiveness of their antimicrobial or antioxidant activity. Because whole spices possess these properties, they can be employed as natural preservatives in the food industry. Finally, some spices' antibacterial and antioxidant properties, such as turmeric, black pepper, clove, nutmeg, turmeric, cumin, and cinnamon, have created a research field in which they can be employed as food preservatives. For example, spices used in foods, such as meats, have a high likelihood of success and potential antimicrobial activity comparable to that of currently used nitrite-based preservatives, which have been claimed to have negative health effects, allowing researchers to investigate a method to replace chemical-based preservatives with natural-based ones for food preservation.
