The importance of food packaging is no need to underline since only a handful of foods are sold in an unpackaged state. Furthermore, the fact that, on average, around 25% of the exfactory cost of consumer foods is for their packaging provides the incentive and the challenge for food packaging technologists to design and develop functional packages at minimum cost.
Function of Food Packaging
Shelf life of a food states for keeping the food itself away from detoriation and make it stay at the accepted quality. Main function of food packaging is just enough protection to ensure that the food maintains its acceptability until the end of its shelf life however to maket his, you need to have detailed knowledge and understanding of both food and packaging and how together they combine to deliver the desired shelf life.
Factors Affecting Shelf Life
- Product characteristics, including formulation and processing parameters
- Environment to which the product is exposed during distribution and storage
- Properties of the package
The shelf life of a food can be altered by changing its composition and formulation, processing parameters, packaging system, or the environment to which it is exposed.
Foods can be classified according to the degree of protection required from the package, such as maximum moisture gain or O2 uptake. This enables calculations to be made to determine whethera particular packaging material would provide the barrier required to give the desired product shelf life.
Different Types of Food Packaging
There are many different types of food packaging to protect the food from contamination and spoilage. Thermoform Vacuum and Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) are two types of common packaging which is quite often used in fresh meat, meat products like sausage, salami, sucuk, dried meat, chicken and poultry products, cheese and dairy products, bakery, fish and seafood and some other industries to preserve the food for a certain time of interval without detoriation.
What is Vacuum Packaging ?
Vacuum packaging is the easiest way of modifying the atmosphere, which is, removing the air (and thus O2) from the package before sealing; it can have a beneficial effect by preventing the growth of aerobic microorganisms.
Vacuum packaging for foods is simply taking the air outside the pack and maket he plastic film sticking on the food product itself. In thermoform vacuum packaging method which is also known as roll-stock vacuum packaging, the machine forms the plastic film to a desired shape with the help of heat and then food product is put in the tray and after then it sucks out the air from the tray and seals with the heat.
Thermoforming vacuum packaging machines are categorized into two, one is manual and the other is automatic. Automatic thermoform vacuum packaging machines are faster and more effective than manual and used for big production lots.
Shelf Life of Vacuum Packaging
Even depending on the food type without vacuum packaging in general the shelf life is very short however thermoforming vacuum packaging increases the shelf life. For a white cheese without thermoforming vacuum packaging the shelf life is 3 days whereas the shelf life of the same cheese with vacuum packaging is up to 15 days in good storage conditions.
What are the advantages fo Thermoform Vacuum Packaging
- Extended of shelf life
- Protection of food and non food products
- Improved quality
- Exact portioning in advance
- Losing less weight during storage
- Not mixing the taste when keepin in the storage room
- No cross contamination in the storage room
- Protection against contact, contamination, moisture
- Protection against oxygen
- Protection against light
- Protection again oxidation, corrosion, dust
- Better efficiency
- Attractive on the shelf
