Food Packaging Borrows Space-Age Technology
Researchers are studying food packaging that not only protects the food but also can make the food healthier and is kinder to the environment. Food packaging has become a marvel of space-age technology. Salads come in a bag that keeps the greens crisp; fresh pasta cooked al dente is in a box; coffee is in “bricks” that keep it fresh and convenient to store; tuna comes in a flexible pouch.
Tomorrow’s food packages will be space-age wonders, says Joseph Marcy, professor of food science and technology. His students have regularly designed packaging that wins top awards in contests such as the Italian Packaging Technology student competition. Virginia Tech is the only university in the competition to have a winner every year for the past five years.
“Our students are inventing the future,” Marcy says. “Food packaging today does much more than hold the product. This year’s Virginia Tech winner of the Italian packaging competition is an example of how our students are working in the newer
world of active food packaging.”
John Koontz, a Ph.D. student in food science and technology, studies materials interacting with the environment and with the food to prolong shelf life, improve safety, and enhance sensory properties in foods and beverages.
His research investigates how food polymer packaging can serve as a reservoir from which active ingredients, such as antioxidants, are delivered in a controlled manner into the food.
Koontz’s project is just one example of the varied packaging work being conducted in the Department of Food Science and Technology.
Marcy, who has been honored as an outstanding teacher at Virginia Tech, is helping to add value to crops in Southwest Virginia through new packaging applications. His research shows that Modified Atmosphere Packaging helps harvested broccoli maintain higher fresh weight, have brighter color, retain vitamins, and better preserve cancerfighting compounds generally making it more marketable. Farming enterprises that formerly grew tobacco are testing broccoli as a possible substitute crop.
Marcy’s process consists of using shrink-wrapping with micro-perforated plastic film to completely enclose the broccoli head. Broccoli is a fragile product and this film allows air and respiration gases to ventilate to and from the broccoli and retain moisture,
increasing product shelf life. This packaging is more efficient and less expensive than traditional ice packaging.
Marcy is also researching ways to safely package the foods astronauts enjoy so that they can be taken on lengthy trips to Mars. The package has to meet certain criteria. The weight must be minimal and, because it must conserve electricity, which is used for heating and sterilizing the food, the packaging must be an efficient conductor. It must be reusable so it can process food in transit and then be a disposal unit for waste material. Marcy, working with others on the project used ohmic technology for the heating and sterilization system. It requires only a small amount of electrical power, which must be carefully conserved in space travel.
Ohmic packaging technology is used to heat Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) foods for soldiers in locations where they do not have conventional kitchens such as in Iraq.
Students in the department showed how that this technology could be commercialized too, Marcy says. One group created a way to package a hot fudge sundae. Customers would buy the ice cream and the chocolate fudge in a device similar to that used in the
military’s MREs. After activating the disposable device, customers would pour the now-heated chocolate onto the ice cream to create a hot fudge sundae.