When you walk through the door of your local supermarket or grocery store, you expect that the food you will be putting in your cart, taking home and feeding your family is going to be safe. That’s a pretty fair ask. Nobody wants to buy much less eat food that is spoiled or in some way unsafe.
We want our fruits and vegetables to be fresh, our meats to be disease free and our milk not to be sour. Luckily for us, the food industry has developed standards over the last 100 years that have those same ends in mind as well as much more we couldn’t even think of.
To do this, the food industry has developed technology, special equipment, and standardized practices. One example of the special equipment being used every day is the food metal detector. Using a food metal detector helps food workers detect dangerous levels of things like lead in our food. Working to reduce this has resulted in fewer food-bourne illness and a healthier populace than before. Food metal detectors come in many different sizes, depending, of course, on what type of food you are testing.
In addition to using a food metal detector to inspect food, another technological breakthrough in recent decades has been the use of x-ray food inspection equipment. X-ray technology can penetrate the surface of the food and see any problems on the inside.
Over the last few decades, strides have been taken to make food packaging more practical and reliable. Packaging machines use many different methods of packaging to seal food. Vacuum pouches will seal in the freshness for some foods and keep it fresh for very long periods of time. In fact, vacuum sealers can make food last three to five times longer than plastic wrap or containers. If you’re putting something in the freezer for a while, it might be best to find one of those vacuum sealers for yourself.
Every year in America, one out of every six people will suffer from some kind of food-bourne illness and among those, three thousand people die. That number has come dramatically down since the days of Upton Sinclair and “The Jungle,” but it is still a number that we want to shrink even further. By keeping a sharp eye out on what we eat and how we eat it, we can help ourselves in this struggle over food-bourne illness. In addition, we at once salute the food industry and cheer them on as they use technology, innovation, and the best practices to keep our food healthy and tasting great.