Color-changing bar codes could indicate safety
I knew Mom wanted us to have dinner with the family, so when my stomach started growling on the four-hour drive to her house I dutifully chose a strawberry milk at the truck stop over the fried chicken I knew was at the counter.
My husband and I both got a bottle of pink moo juice (which is markedly different from yellow cow water) and one was past its “Use by” date.
When I walked back in to tell the cashier, she simply said, “Ew,” and held out her hand for the offending product while I went to get a new one.
I knew the date on the bottle told me when my drink would taste the best; it didn’t really say much about whether it was safe.
Safety is a result of a product’s history.
Brett Lucht and William Euler -- chemistry professors at the University of Rhode Island – came up with a nearly invisible dye that will turn red when a package of food gets above 40 F.
That could tell me whether a bottle of milk was likely to be safe before I bought it.
The professors also have a patent for a two-bar code system that uses one made with color-changing dye to mask the one that’s typically scanned at the checkout when the product has warmed up too much.
Sounds pretty cool. I wonder which manufacturers would be willing to use it?
http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/admin/trackback/114073
Casey,
Watch when you are sitting at restaurants during the day and sooner or later you will see a truck making a delivery. A very well managed restaurant will get the refrigerated and frozen products into their cooler quickly but most will take twenty minutes or more and if you go visit a lot of distribution centers you will find many where the dock area is not refrigerated and pallets sit between coming off the truck and going into the cooler.
Pete Snyder will tell you that there is no real difference in growth at 40 or at 45 and he has the studies to back him up. So where do you set the temperature to turn black?
Cold chain is important and cleaner and colder is always the first rule of produce but six days at 34 and four hours at 45 is likely to result in a much lower count than six days and four hours at 39.
Cool site, love the info.
Watch when you are sitting at restaurants during the day and sooner or later you will see a truck making a delivery. A very well managed restaurant will get the refrigerated and frozen products into their cooler quickly but most will take twenty minutes or more and if you go visit a lot of distribution centers you will find many where the dock area is not refrigerated and pallets sit between coming off the truck and going into the cooler.
Pete Snyder will tell you that there is no real difference in growth at 40 or at 45 and he has the studies to back him up. So where do you set the temperature to turn black?
Cold chain is important and cleaner and colder is always the first rule of produce but six days at 34 and four hours at 45 is likely to result in a much lower count than six days and four hours at 39.