According to a study conducted in 2016, an estimated 88 million tonnes of food waste is produced in the EU annually – equivalent to about 173 kg per person. An estimated 60% of the food thrown away in households is edible while in the wholesale and retail sector that figure increases to 83%.
One key reason for this waste is the concern that surrounds use-by dates on the packaging, which were introduced as an important safety measure to prevent customers being sold and eating food that might be unsafe to eat. But more than a fifth of still-edible food is unnecessarily discarded due to date inaccuracies or confusion about what the dates actually mean. For instance, many Europeans confuse best-before dates -a recommended consumption time frame for when a product is freshest- with expiry dates.
Food labels don't reflect the different conditions of how a product is stored as it is transported to a shop and ultimately to a consumer's home, according to Solveiga Pakštaitė, founder of Mimica, a company based in London, UK, that is leading a project to produce more accurate food spoilage indicators.
Pakštaitė and her team want to tackle food waste with a new type of label. They have produced a tactile indicator that changes with the freshness of the food. The label contains a thin layer of gelatine containing biologically active ingredients that mimic what happens to the food it is attached to. As the food decomposes the gelatine breaks down, revealing a bottom layer that is bumpy to the touch.
"The idea initially came from thinking about how visually impaired people cope with expiry dates on food," Pakštaitė said. "They have no way of seeing the date printed on the side of the packaging so often they choose foods that are processed and tinned because they don't go off as quickly. This means the food they eat isn't very healthy. So I wanted to come up with a solution that could help them.
Phys.org further quoted her as saying: "But as I researched expiry dates, I realised that we are all sort of blind to food when it goes off. We rely on the expiry date that often tells us little about what is happening to the food inside the packaging."
