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The Food That E-Mails or Texts You When It's About to Go Bad

by Tim Stevens on September 21, 2008 at 05:34 PM

Smart Labels Flag Bad Food, TXTing Soon
Sometimes it's easy to tell when food is bad; if it picks up a nasty odor or gains a bit of fuzz where it was previously smooth, it's probably time for it to come out of the fridge and head to the trash. Wouldn't it be nice to know just before a given edible went south so that you coould use it up? That's the idea behind a new label technology that can monitor ambient conditions and predict when food is starting to go bad.

The labels, developed by scientists at Manchester University in the U.K., are able to sense the temperature and age of food and determine how much shelf life a product has left. The intent right now is to help inventory management for companies that stock bulk foods, but in the not too distant future, an enhanced a version will be able to communicate with refrigerators, which could in turn send you a text or e-mail saying it's time to drink that milk or lose it! [From: The Sun]

Tags: food, label, spoiled, texting

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