A press release from the American Chemical Society recently proposed an interesting way of making food labels that cut down on waste: a color-changing adhesive that would give consumers a clue as to how safe any food is to eat.
Apparently the labels are designed to be small and unobtrusive, but still sophisticated enough to pinpoint exactly where along the freshness spectrum a potential food purchases happens to be at any given time. It was revealed during a recent conference.
Alongside this release is a promotional video about the tag that seeks to emphasize the gradual way it works and how unobtrusive and inexpensive these tags could be. Dr. Chao Zhang, head researcher in this project, was quoted in the release on how the chemical composition of the small tags reacts to contents of the container that they are applied to.
This could potentially be used on a variety of different products, although the initial tags were just applied to diary products.
“Over time, the metallic silver gradually deposits on each gold nanorod, forming a silver shell layer,” he said. “That changes the particle’s chemical composition and shape, so the tag color now would be different.”
Your company might have reservations about something like this might not want to incorporate it into your packaging solutions. However, at the very least, you can use a system for making labels to allow for these kinds of things if you make the decision that they are needed. You can also choose labels that give your consumer base instructions on how to tell when the food item is unsafe to consume.
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