How Smart Food Packaging is Enhancing Food Quality

Smart food technologies like intelligent and active packaging can help improve food quality and safety and avoid food wastage.

FREMONT, CA: A complex supply chain must be followed in order for a food item to reach a consumer's fork from the farm. From harvesting to processing to packaging and distribution. Standards have been implemented to ensure that each food item is of suitable quality and safety, and food packaging has been progressed with great care and inventiveness.

Technologies employed in food packaging

When it comes to efficient, safe packaging, technology has opened up new possibilities for getting food products from farm to plate, preserving them, and drastically decreasing waste. Intelligent packaging and active packaging are the two most common categories of smart packaging technologies.

Intelligent packaging

The fundamental goal of intelligent food packaging is to track the status of a product by measuring and evaluating both internal and exterior elements. This data is then linked to an external interface, allowing adjustments to the supply chain to be made as needed.

Active packaging

Active packaging, on the other hand, is a type of technology that may react to the environment as well as the data provided by intelligent packaging. This type of food packaging is designed to actively adapt to changing conditions, ensuring that food products keep their quality and remain fresh throughout the supply chain. Built-in methods to prevent spoiling are among the technology linked with this type of packaging.

Food loss during the production and distribution stages is a major issue that results in excessive waste. Every year, a startlingly large portion of the world's food supply is lost, largely owing to food packaging-related difficulties.

More insights into where the most wastage is generated, what adds to this waste, and what steps may be taken to remedy the problems can be gleaned using the information generated by intelligent packaging. When it comes to building the next generation of food packaging and reimagining the supply chain to improve efficiency, this information is important.

Intelligent packaging also aids in identifying chances for active packaging to make a significant impact in the supply chain. More modern temperature-controlled settings, for example, can be used to not only effectively preserve perishable goods but also contribute to sustainability by utilizing the most energy-efficient technologies.