Smart packaging allows visibility into changes in food quality

Liu Shaowei, member of the Food Safety Professional Committee of Shanghai Food Society

As a cutting-edge trend of food packaging, food intelligent packaging has developed rapidly in recent years and is striving to solve the problem
of visualizing food quality changes.

What is smart packaging

The definition of "smart packaging" dates back to a conference
in London in 1992.
In layman's terms, smart packaging refers to the detection of the environmental conditions of packaged food and providing information
on the quality of packaged food during circulation and storage.
The integration of technologies such as mechanical, biological, electronic, chemical sensors and network technology into packaging materials can enable ordinary packaging to achieve many "special functions"
.
Commonly used food intelligent packaging forms mainly include time-temperature type, gas indication type and freshness indication type
.

Types of smart packaging

Time-temperature type Time-temperature intelligent packaging mainly records the continuous process of temperature change of food during storage and sales through time and temperature indicators, so as to predict the quality change of food and ensure the safety of
perishable food.
According to the type of indicator used, it can be divided into four categories
: physical, chemical, biological and enzyme.

Gas Indicator Gas Indicator Smart Packaging can monitor the change of gas in food packaging and react with specific gases in the package to monitor the freshness of the food in the package and whether the packaging material is damaged
.
According to the different types of detected gases, the gas indicator type can be divided into carbon dioxide, oxygen, volatile sulfur-containing compounds, volatile nitrogenous compounds and ethylene comprehensive type
.

Freshness indicator type Freshness indicator type often predicts the freshness
of food by the reaction of food metabolites (such as glucose, ethanol, organic acids, adenosine triphosphate degradation products and biogenic amines) with indicators.
The indicators used include microbial indicators, chemical reaction color change indicators, etc
.

Identification of smart packaging

RFID is an automatic identification system based on radio frequency identification tags for communication, which is mainly used for origin traceability and supply chain management to achieve the purpose of
quality supervision.
At present, this technology has many applications
in logistics, packaging, retail, manufacturing and other industries.
In foreign countries, some companies apply this technology to the traceability of bakery products and the quality control
of the whole process.

New applications of RFID technology are also being developed
.
When RFID tags emit wireless signals to interact with food, their signals produce specific changes
depending on the level of specific contaminants in the product.
At present, this technology has been used to identify whether baby food is adulterated with melamine and alcohol
.
In the future, RFID tags can not only be used for food supply chain traceability, traceability of perishable food, etc.
, but also real-time non-destructive monitoring of food contamination
.

Smart packaging and functional packaging

Functional packaging and intelligent packaging are two new types of packaging forms, which can make food packaging have functional characteristics that traditional packaging cannot obtain, and meet consumers' requirements
for food quality and safety.

Common functional packaging includes modified atmosphere packaging, antibacterial packaging, ethylene adsorption packaging, oxygen-absorbing packaging, self-heating/self-cooling packaging, odor adsorption packaging, aromatic odor release packaging, hygroscopic packaging, etc
.

China Food News(November 16, 2022, Version 07)

(Responsible editor: Yang Xiaojing)