In the UK, a student has developed a detector that indicates the level of freshness of fruit. Better than expiry dates, smell?
On the other side of the Channel, the fight against food waste fuels a number of headlines which very regularly accuse the system of expiry dates as being responsible for this disaster, estimated at 6.6 million tonnes of foodstuffs thrown away each year by British homes, according to a report by the NGO Wrap unveiled last October. Latest action to date: the decision of Marks & Spencer stores to remove use-by dates on fruit and vegetable trays. Her Majesty’s subjects are in fact increasingly encouraged to trust their sense of smell to reduce food waste. The Morrisons chain of stores, for example, has removed the expiry dates on its own brand milk bottles.
In the extension of this reflection on common sense to reduce the carbon impact generated by food waste, a student from Northumbria University, who is a reference in terms of research, has developed a kind of sniffer detector, capable of assess the state of rotting of a fruit or vegetable. Presented by the expert magazine in design innovations Dezeen, this graduation project, unveiled earlier this month at the Business Design Center in Islington, London, is in fact equipped with a camera and an ethylene sensor , the volatile gas emitted by apples, bananas and other potatoes when they degrade. It is a plant hormone that stimulates fruit ripening. The prototype was developed for fruit, but the creator specifies that one can very well imagine adding different sensors to identify other types of gas emitted by food.
Called “snoot”, a term in British slang to evoke the nose (the conk more precisely), the device is not only a detector of freshness, it is also a purveyor of recipes. Associated with a mini-printer, the invention makes suggestions for dishes to be made according to the degree of maturity of the product. An entire program !