The Importance of Packaging in Ensuring Food Safety

The Importance of Packaging in Ensuring Safe Food Packaging is indispensable not only for protecting food from external factors and health risk factors, but also for extending shelf life and improving quality. Prof. Dr. Atıf Can Seydim, Faculty Member at Süleyman Demirel University Department of Food Engineering, drew attention to the role of packaging in enabling consumers to access safe food on World Food Safety Day. Karma Grup will organize a Quality and Product Experience Seminar on 23-24 November 2023, and Prof. Dr. Atıf Can Seydim, who is also the Coordinator of this seminar, stated that packaging will be one of the topics discussed at the seminar, where shelf quality will be addressed from all angles this year. During the pandemic period, we experienced more closely the importance of packaged food consumption. The hygienic delivery of the foods we consume to our tables prevents many health-related risks. Packaged food consumption is critical in this regard. Prof. Dr. Atıf Can Seydim noted that the primary purpose of food packaging is to deliver food to consumers while minimizing spoilage and quality loss, and continued as follows: "The first duty of packaging is to protect the food. For this purpose, it has duties of protecting the product inside, increasing its durability, providing ease in loading, unloading, storage, and use within the distribution chain, presenting the product, and encouraging consumers to make a purchase. From the moment a consumer reads the label on the packaging, they begin to obtain information about the product. We can read much information from the label such as nutritional value, production, use, preparation and storage conditions, and expiration date." Prof. Dr. Seydim emphasized that packaging is of great importance in preventing food spoilage, extending shelf life, and preventing various contaminations that could pose health risks. He stressed that consumers must approach the matter with this awareness and not give credence to explanations that deviate from scientific facts. Prof. Dr. Atıf Can Seydim stated: "Packaging plays an important role in delivering safe food and food with extended shelf life to consumers while also contributing to the protection of public health. It must be considered that unpackaged food carries health risks and can deteriorate more easily, leading to waste."

Food shelf life is extending

Prof. Dr. Atıf Can Seydim, who also addressed the role of packaging in preventing food losses and food waste, said: "Along with innovations in food production processes and technological advances, applications in packaging systems extend the shelf life of foods. Extended shelf life means improved food quality as well as prevention of food losses. For example, approximately 43 kWh of energy is consumed in the process from wheat production in the field to flour and bread production for the production of 1 kilogram of bread. When you package the bread while extending its shelf life, the amount of energy consumed to package 1 kilogram of bread is approximately 0.4 kWh. In other words, to protect 1 kilogram of bread, we actually save 11 times more energy. Even from an energy perspective alone, packaging protects many times more than its own cost and the energy spent for its production. Moreover, the spoilage of bread means the loss of flour, wheat, the farmer's labor to produce that wheat, the water used, diesel, and fertilizer. We can give another example from meat. The loss of 1 kilogram of ground meat due to being unpackaged or not packaged appropriately is a serious loss from both economic and environmental perspectives. Packaging is the final lock point. In the subsequent stage, the task of preventing food waste falls to all links in the chain reaching the consumer and, of course, to consumers themselves. Conscious action by consumers is very important at this point."