In recent years, due to the improvement of people’s awareness of saving and the social trend of anti-food waste, the food near the shelf life but not beyond the shelf life has also won the favor of many consumers because of the price advantage.

Consumers always pay attention to the shelf life rules when buying food. What are the main factors affecting the shelf life of food? What will you check when buying food? This will take you to understand!

The main factors affecting the shelf life of a food?

Shelf life is defined as “the period when pre-packaged food maintains quality under the storage conditions specified by the label”, and the factors affecting the shelf life of food generally include the following aspects:

1. Factors related to the product itself: food raw materials, pH value, oxygen, preservatives and other factors will affect the shelf life of food. Vacuum packaging or the correct use of preservatives, can control the growth of microorganisms, so as to extend the shelf life.

2. Factors related to the production process: processing technology, packaging, storage and other factors will also affect the shelf life of the food. Qualified and complete packaging can prevent the food from being contaminated and deteriorated in the subsequent storage, circulation and other links, and the food storage in the appropriate temperature and environment is also an important link to ensure the shelf life of the food.

What will you check when buying food?

1. Check the packaging: Before purchase, the food packaging should be checked to make sure whether there is damaged packaging, vacuum packaging bag, air leakage, can drum cover, incomplete food labeling etc.

2. Check the labels: before buying packaged food, check whether the production date, shelf life, production license number, producer information and other food labels are clear and complete, and check whether the product is within the shelf life.

3. Check the storage conditions: check whether the storage method of food in the supermarket is consistent with the label description, for example, the food that should be frozen should not be placed on the room temperature shelves.

Good food packaging is an important guarantee of food shelf life, and clear food labeling is also the basis of safe food. In order to ensure that the factory product packaging is complete and qualified, more food enterprises began to use visual detection equipment to improve the detection efficiency. Techik can provide various packaging food custom visual inspection equipment and solutions, including Techik spray code character intelligent visual detection system, heat shrink film intelligent visual detection system and etc for food enterprises to solve the thermal shrink film detection, spray code character detection problems, including bottled products heat shrink film damage, heat shrink film on the folds, incomplete spray code character, missing spray code label, reprinting spray code, etc.