Your smartphone could soon be able to tell you when the food in your fridge has gone off.
Freshness sensors that can be linked to the devices have been developed by British scientists.
The cheap and eco-friendly gadgets will reduce food waste and plastic pollution – and may even bring down prices for shoppers, according to a new study.
Embedded in packaging, they may replace “best before” dates in meat and fish “within three years”, according to the researchers. They could also be applied to dairy goods and other produce.
“Although they are designed to keep us safe, use-by dates can lead to edible food being thrown away,” said Dr Firat Guder of the department of bioengineering at Imperial College London, who led the study.
“In fact, use-by dates are not completely reliable in terms of safety as people often get sick from foodborne diseases due to poor storage, even when an item is within its use-by.”
One in three UK consumers throw away food solely because it reaches the use-by date. But 60%, or 4.2 million tonnes, of the £12.5 billion-worth of produce we discard annually is safe to eat…….read more
Source: Mirror
