By Les Watkins
Consumers can be putting themselves at risk when trying to open the packaging of newly-bought food. Each year in the UK alone, that task results in about 67,000 people needing hospital treatment for injuries.
Research by two respected nutritional scientists – Dr Malco Cruz-Romero and Dr Joseph P Kerry of University College Cork in Ireland – indicates that this is merely the tip of the problem.
In a recent ly-publ ished book, Processed meats: Improving safety, nutrition and quality, they explain:
“It is thought that only 35 percent of such accidents are reported to hospitals, thereby suggesting that the real figure is more likely to be around 200,000 cases per year.”
And that is just in the UK.
The elderly and those with arthritis or impaired vision are particularly at risk.
A survey of 2,000 people aged 50-plus found that 91 percent of respondents had needed help to open packaging and 71 percent had injured themselves in the attempt.
“Consequently there is a requirement for the meat industry to address such issues…when developing conveniencestyle muscle-based, ready-meal products – not just from a public good perspective but also from demographic and marketing perspectives,” say the authors.
Frustration experienced while accessing a pack’s contents can make consumers switch to a competing product.
And, of course, any injuries could lead to a costly and image-damaging lawsuit.
That is why the provision of consumer convenience is an ever-increasing packaging trend.
Cooked-meat producers are progressively aiming for packaging that is even more easy to open as well as being resealable, oven-able, microwave-able and self-venting.
It should also be easy to grip, provide performance signals and have contact points which protect users from getting burned following heating.
“Market research has shown that consumers will pay more for packaging that provides desired convenience attributes,” they write.
“For example, the introduction of zippered closures over the past 20 years has created an obvious convenience…so that now it is almost impossible to find consumer-friendly packages without this feature.
“Another example of packaging providing convenience is where it is used to portion-control food products. Increasing concern about obesity means that smaller sizes or portions of cooked meat food products are being viewed as correctly sized.”
For purchasers, however, taste remains of paramount importance.
That is stressed in another chapter by Professor Lowell B Catlett of New Mexico State University, USA, who explains how food producers have recently made major strides in understanding the mechanics of taste.
Until the early 1900s science said that the tongue could detect only four flavours – sweet, salty, bitter and sour.
Renowned French chef Augusta Escoffier developed a new type of meat stock, described in his 1903 book Guide Culinaire, in which the tongue could
taste one more flavour. It proved to be an enjoyable one.
Escoffier had stumbled across the amino acid L-glutamate which in 1907 a Japanese chemist used to create the famous monosodium glutamate (MSG) – which as Professor Catlett points out, “became a chef’s secret way to add a new taste sensation”.
Now we jump forward to 2000.
That was when scientists identified a tongue receptor that senses only glutamate and L-amino acids.
Professor Catlett says: “Technology now gave consumers a way to understand and appreciate why they generally love the taste of meat and how that taste sensation can be added to other foods via L-glutamate.”
Processed meats: Improving safety, nutrition and quality (ISBN 13 978 1 84569 466 1) edited by J P and J F Kerry, retailing at US$305+P&P was released last July by Woodhouse Publishing, Sawston, Cambridge, UK.
