A new class of sensors will help to verify the state of preservation of food and to eliminate waste for supermarkets and consumers
Food waste data is devastating in all western countries: about one in three consumers today throw food away because they can't consume it before the expiration date, but over 16% of the food we throw away is still good.
The sensors currently in the prototype stage have a production cost equivalent to two euro cents: known as PEGS, “paper-based electrical gas SENSORS”., identify the emission of ammonia or trimethylamine in meat and fish during their degradation process.
The collected data can be read by a smartphone and anyone passing on food can realize if it is still edible or not.
The researchers who developed PEGS at Imperial College London literally printed carbon electrodes on paper: biodegradable, non-toxic and ecological materials that are perfectly compatible with food and the environment, and work in pair with normal NFC microchips readable by a mobile phone.
The current sensors are not used because they would end up costing a quarter of the packaging of a product. During laboratory tests, PEGS assessed the state of conservation of food much faster than other very expensive sensors, and more accurately. For this winning combination of efficiency and convenience, researchers they are certain which will replace the old expiration dates, completely approximate, also helping producers to develop “short-range” foods with less preservatives and less expense.
PEGS are the first food freshness sensors in the world: the Dr Firat Guder and Dr. Giandrin Barandun co-authors of the study, are enthusiastic: “we created them to make us eat healthier food and to make us waste less: the current expiry date is an unreliable indicator that sometimes leads us to throw away healthy food, sometimes to eat spoiled food just because the date still seems valid ”.
PEGS's ability to identify the freshness of relatively expensive foods such as meat and fish will also lead to less waste for shops, which will no longer be forced to throw food and unsold money (then recovered on consumer prices). More freshness and more savings for consumers too.
Employment forecast: by 2022 they will be on the market.
The research published today in the scientific journal ACS Sensors leaves little space to the imagination: the sensors are at such an advanced stage of development that they can assume their mass use already within the next 3 years.
Not just food
Naturally the field of application of these new sensors can go far beyond the freshness assessment of a food (further improvements will also broaden the range of products that can be observed beyond those based on meat or fish): we could use them to monitor pesticides in agriculture, air quality and The agents pollutants that cause respiratory diseases.
To learn more: here is the study published
