Shelf-Life Extension of Fresh Ready-to-Bake Pizza by the Application of Modified Atmosphere Packaging

Enhancing Shelf Life Prediction of Fresh Pizza with Regression Models and Low Cost Sensors

The waste of food presents a challenge for achieving a sustainable world. In Germany alone, over 10 million tonnes of food are discarded annually, with a worldwide total exceeding 1.3 billion tonnes. A significant contributor to this issue are consumers throwing away still edible food due to the expiration of its best-before date. Best-before dates currently include large safety margins, but more precise and cost effective prediction techniques are required. To address this challenge, research was conducted on low-cost sensors and machine learning techniques were developed to predict the spoilage of fresh pizza. The findings indicate that combining a gas sensor, such as volatile organic compounds or carbon dioxide, with a random forest or extreme gradient boosting regressor can accurately predict the day of spoilage. This provides a more accurate and cost-efficient alternative to current best-before date determination methods, reducing food waste, saving resources, and improving food safety by reducing the risk of consumers consuming spoiled food.

Combined effect of vacuum packaging and refrigerated storage on the chemical quality of paneer tikka

Paneer tikka, a popular dish for vegetarians, is a tongue tingling favourite of Indian gourmets. It is a perishable commodity which requires more than five hours for its preparation. The shelf life of paneer tikka is hardly one day at room temperature which impedes its proper marketing. In order to enhance the shelf life of paneer tikka, the product was vacuum packed in two high barrier packages, viz., LLDPE(*)/BA(†)/Nylon-6/BA/LDPE(‡) (110 μ, (*)linear low density polyethylene, (†)binding agent, (‡)low density polyethylene) and metallized polyester/LDPE (20/75 μ) along with LDPE (100 μ) as control, and stored at 3 ± 1 °C. The stored samples were evaluated at 0, 10, 20, 30 and 40 day(s) for changes in chemical characteristics, namely moisture, pH, titratable acidity, free fatty acids content, tyrosine content and water activity. The analysis of variance of the data revealed that type of packages had significant influence on all the above parameters excluding water activity during storage of paneer tikka.