{"id":246793,"date":"2026-11-07T02:45:26","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T08:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/smart-packaging-film-lights-up-under-uv-as-meat-loses-freshness"},"modified":"2026-11-07T02:45:26","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T08:45:26","slug":"smart-packaging-film-lights-up-under-uv-as-meat-loses-freshness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/smart-packaging-film-lights-up-under-uv-as-meat-loses-freshness","title":{"rendered":"Smart packaging film \u2018lights up\u2019 under UV as meat loses freshness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Food spoilage causes chemical changes that are not always easy to detect by appearance alone. To provide a clearer indication of freshness and quality, researchers at Kyushu University have developed a smart packaging film that changes color and glows under ultraviolet (UV) light as meat loses freshness. Tested with refrigerated mutton, the film responds to compounds released during spoilage, offering two ways to track changes in food quality. The findings are <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.cej.2026.181346\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the Chemical Engineering Journal.<\/p>\n<p>Food packaging is generally designed to protect food from the external environment and spoilage, but it typically provides little information about food quality. Certain food components can act as freshness indicators and provide additional information about their condition. Anthocyanins, for example, are natural plant pigments that change color as acidity changes, making them useful for detecting chemical changes associated with food spoilage. However, these color changes can be subtle during early stages and may be affected by lighting conditions.<\/p>\n<p>A research team led by professor Fumihiko Tanaka and associate professor Fumina Tanaka of Kyushu University\u2019s Faculty of Agriculture set out to address this challenge. Working with collaborators from Nanjing Agricultural University in China, Ghent University in Belgium and Nguyen Tat Thanh University in Vietnam, they aimed to develop a more reliable and sensitive method for monitoring food freshness in real time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Food spoilage causes chemical changes that are not always easy to detect by appearance alone. To provide a clearer indication of freshness and quality, researchers at Kyushu University have developed a smart packaging film that changes color and glows under ultraviolet (UV) light as meat loses freshness. Tested with refrigerated mutton, the film responds to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,38,1509],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-engineering","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}