Reports from the Front Lines of Packaging Innovation

Once upon a time in the never-never land of protecting food products during their distribution cycle from farm or sea to table, came a storm of new food packaging called nanocomposites, liquid crystal oxygen barriers, radio frequency identifications, plasma discharge sterilization, active antimicrobial packaging, and multiple-layer structures. Reckoned as history by some who designate such sciences, they entered with great fanfare and streaked through our consciousnesses—the promise of the…