We all struggle with knowing when exactly it’s time to throw food away. The anxiety of potentially poisoning your family leads to people throwing away a lot of perfectly good food.
Or else dithering until something actually goes green so you can bin it with a clear conscience!
However recent graduate Solveiga Pakstaite has the answer to our prayers with her amazing new ‘bump mark’ invention.
Rather than a date, her system is a special label that develops bumps as the product decays. Rather than the ever dodgy sniff test, now you’ll just have to rub your finger against the label and feel the texture.
The way it works is by bumpy plastic with a layer of gelatine. The gelatine will decay at the same rate as the food, revealing the bumps when it’s time to throw the food away.
Solveiga, who is from Hertfordshire, has won the British James Dyson Design Award for her design, and is currently applying for a patent.
“I wanted to create a label that would change its texture over time to model the decay process of food and drink,” she explained.
“Why gelatine? Because it is a protein, so it decays at the same rate as protein-based foods like pork, milk and cheese.”
“And the gelatine can be adapted to match the expiry period of the food by altering the concentration.”
“So, the higher the concentration, the longer the gel will stay solid. The label simply copies what the food in the package is doing, so the expiry information is going to be far more accurate than a printed date.”
Solveiga’s inspiration for the design came from her work with blind people during her college course. The system was originally conceived as a way to let people unable to see best before dates, but its uses stretch far beyond this.
“From the start, I knew that the solution must appeal to sighted people also, because the sad reality is that new solutions only get implemented by companies if the benefits are useful to the majority.”
“This is why I worked to create a cheap solution that could be applied to existing food packages and also provides information that even sighted people haven’t had access to before: information about the actual condition of food.”
