"food packaging" news and stories

So does that box of cereal seem a little slimmer, that can of tuna a little lighter? Does it feel like you just bought that jar of peanut butter that you're now scraping the bottom of?

Well, at least you can take comfort in the fact that you're not going crazy. As the New York Times reports, we can say so long to the era of "supersizing": Meet the incredible shrinking carton of ice cream.

No doubt you've heard that the cost of, well, just about everything is going up. But what you may have only had an inkling of until now is that one sneaky way food makers are passing those costs onto you is not to raise prices; it's to get you to shell out the same amount for just a little bit less in return.

We know that branding is big business these days in the food world, with companies constantly experimenting with new logos, flashy colors and claims that their product is the healthiest.

Even more new packaging could be in store, but this time spearheaded by the FDA. A recent Time Magazine report indicates that the FDA is working on a "voluntary national system" for companies to use for front-of-package labeling. The idea is that you'd be able to cruise down the aisle and a quick glance would tell you basic facts about a product. The plan would mirror something that's currently being tested in British supermarkets, where a color coding system is used.

The program is called "Traffic Light" and uses the colors of, yes, a traffic light to give shoppers a quick burst of nutritional information. Based upon fat, saturated fat, sugars and salts a product contains, a red sticker indicates "high," an amber sticker indicates "medium" and a green sticker indicates "low."

He says it's not the driving force in his life, but Michael Jacobson definitely has a thing about opening up a bag of potato chips and discovering it's half-filled with air.

"It's one of those things that annoys so many people, including me," said Jacobson, who is the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, commonly referred to as the "food police." "There's a law that forbids unwarranted emptiness in boxes that's never enforced."

Knocking on melons. Squeezing avocados. We all have our little ways to pick out which produce we think is the freshest. But a handful of designers are taking that to the next level with the creation of a fading barcode that disappears along with a product's freshness, Treehugger reported.

When a fruit or vegetable arrives at the store, it's tagged with the Fresh Code. Over time, the lines (or bars in the bar code) fade, showing how long it has been in the store and letting both customers and store owners know when produce is past its prime.

While the jury is still out on whether BPA -- Bisphenol A, a chemical used in many plastics that may cause health problems -- is safe in food packaging, some manufacturers are looking for alternatives.

But finding BPA-free cans isn't exactly an easy job, as several food manufacturers have discovered, reported the Washington Post. BPA is used as the lining of nearly every can on supermarket shelves, and even if food is canned in BPA-free materials, some of its ingredients may have encountered the chemical.