ITAL, Brazil, delivers food waste advice

ITAL, Brazil, delivers food waste advice
 
Luis Madi, researcher and director at Brazil’s ITAL food technology institute, delivered a presentation at the Anufood Brazil show, Sao Paulo, in mid-March regarding successful strategies across packaging and food science for combatting food waste.
“When we talk about using packaging to reduce food loss and waste, we need to stress two other elements: public policies to guarantee success; and education to ensure that the consumer disposes correctly of packaging so that it is recycled or reused,” he told delegates.
 
Areas covered in Madi’s presentation included the importance of transport and distribution packaging which could withstand compression, shock and vibration. He also discussed active and intelligent plastics packaging with barrier or absorbent properties with regard to oxygen, aroma and moisture, with the options of modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) and smart sensors which indicate when food starts to deteriorate.
 
One intelligent packaging system, which uses colour change under ultraviolet light to indicate food quality, was worked on by Claire Sarantopoulos at ITAL’s CETEA centre for packaging, he said, and would be the subject of a presentation at a plastics packaging seminar in November this year.
 
Communication was a key part of the challenge, said Madi, given that many in the food and drink supply chain were not even aware of many of the technologies available. “This suggests some of the ways in which a technical institute such as ours can help to develop the use of packaging to minimise food losses and waste,” he said.