“The milk is past its expiry date. We have to throw it out.” - “No, we don’t. It smells fine.” - “But it says so right on the carton.”
It’s an argument that’s been heard in households around the world: Does the expiration date on the package really mean the milk or the chicken or the eggs are bad?
Not necessarily, says Yoav Levy, the founder and CEO of Freshpoint, an Israeli startup that aims to solve the freshness debate once and for all using intelligent date code technology.
It’s an idea with enormous potential: Freshpoint just signed a deal with a major American restaurant chain.
“My daughters take the cottage cheese out of the fridge, check the date, and off it goes in the trashcan,” Levy laments to ISRAEL21c. “Their decision is based on zero information.”
An estimated 30 to 40 percent of food manufactured in the West is thrown away while it’s still good, Levy adds. “If you translate that into dollars, direct and indirect, including transportation and the environmental effect, that’s a trillion dollars a year of lost economic value.”
The expiration dates on most packages you find in the supermarket today are based on a static, worst-case scenario that simply calculates the number of days since a product left the warehouse, Levy explains.
Freshpoint adds a second component: temperature. Together, it’s known as a “TTI,” for time-temperature interval.
Manufacturers simply put Freshpoint’s inexpensive label on a product to monitor the temperature ranges the product goes through on its journey to your home. The label – which can be printed in a wide range of sizes, shapes and designs — is activated when the product leaves the factory.
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