Among the appellations attached to a new generation of packaging that does more than we are accustomed to are active, smart, and intelligent. Does this mean that our same-old food packaging is dumb? The overwhelming majority of more than 100,000 participants in American packaging would not agree, since contemporary packaging appears to perform magnificently in protecting our $700 billion worth of food from factory to consumers’ tummies.
In my January 2001 column, I defined active packaging as res…