Food packaging is emerging as a new industry in these modern times. Yet the materials we use in packagings like plastic and metal are known toxins to human and might be slowly poisoning us. Contamination of flavor is the biggest commercial issue nowadays. This means that either the food flavor is lost after packaging or you start to have a packaging flavor in your food.
Food tastes like plastic
Imagine yourself in your car and being stuck in traffic for a long time. You start feeling thirsty and you find a half-drunk water bottle, which might be a few days old. You take a sip and it tastes like plastic mixed in your water. This is due to the chemicals released from the plastic and is absorbed in your water. You should remember these four food enemies after they have been packed: oxygen, heat, light and time.
However, the expert says that many of the toxic compounds are odorless and are in such a low quantity that they are harmless and cannot be tasted in your food.
Food tastes like metal
If you are experiencing a metallic, taste in your food that does not mean that you are ingesting a metal. Metals are the catalyst and are responsible for the degradation of certain chemicals. These chemical reactions can produce a metallic taste in your food and it is only the essence, not the actual metal you taste. However, they are still a major contributor to flavor contamination.
Food tastes like a glass
Have you ever experienced a flavor of glass in any of your food stored in glass jars? Surely, your answer is no. glass material is amazingly inert and is the most preferred material used for food packaging due to its properties not contributing to flavor contamination.
How to avoid flavor contamination
As already mentioned above, you have to keep your packaged food from four enemies: Oxygen, heat, light and time. That is the reason you often read this line on the packaging “store in a dark and cool place”. To avoid such problems you can stop buying the packaged stuff and start buying the unpackaged fresh stuff that doesn’t need to be stored for a long time or you can use your own glass bottles for some stuff instead of cans and plastic material.
Refrigerator: the flavor spoiler
The refrigerator is the biggest source for storing food for man since its discovery. It not only helps in storage but also maintains its flavor to some extent. This device is extensively used in households as well as in commercial areas in the form of cold rooms in UK where low temperature is maintained for preserving the bulk of food items. Items like meat and vegetables can be easily stored for a few days while freezing them will increase their lives even more. However, fruits, on the other hand, become mushy after refrigeration, preferred not to be chilled, and should be used soon after you buy them.
Although refrigeration is the most preferable and commonly used method of storing food it does not always prove to be a good choice when it comes to the flavor of your food. This depends on the type of food you have stored and the number of days.
