Unwrapping your shopping to find you have bought mouldy bread, rotten strawberries and sour milk could soon become a thing of the past- thanks to a range of emerging "active packaging" technologies. While conventional packaging simply acts as a barrier that protects food, active packaging can do a lot more. Some materials interact with the product to improve it in some way, or give the consumer better information on the state it is in. For instance, they may soak up oxygen inside a wrapper to help prevent food spoilage or show whether potentially dangerous foods like red meat and chicken have been stored at unsafe temperatures. Others kill bacteria, and some can reveal whether the food is beginning to go off.
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