A New Age for Food’s Shelf Life

The stuffed pepper entree from Huxtable’s Kitchen is what most people would call fresh: It hasn’t been frozen and the peppers are still firm, bright red and sweet in their package.

But this meal could have been sitting on the supermarket shelf for close to a month.

Breakthroughs in packaging and careful ingredient selection have enabled companies such as Vernon-based Huxtable’s to extend the marketable life of perishable foods from days to weeks or even months--so long, in fact, that food processors are beginning to stretch the very definition of “fresh” food.

“The [new] definition of fresh is that it isn’t spoiled. It’s still good,” said Karl Deily, a senior vice president with Sealed Air Corp., which makes increased-shelf-life packaging.

These longer lives may benefit manufacturers and retailers and give time-strapped shoppers more choices, but some nutritionists question whether these advancements are really better for consumers.

“It’s certainly not going to increase in nutritional value the longer it sits on the shelf,” said Marion Nestle, who chairs New York University’s Food Studies program. And “the longer it sits, the greater the safety hazard,” she said.

Technically, the Food and Drug Administration says, only food that is raw, never frozen or heated and contains no preservatives can be called fresh. The agency came up with this definition in 1999 because of the large number of processed food companies using the word “fresh” on the labels of their canned, frozen, chemically processed and cooked food.

Food companies say they can extend the shelf life of some foods without compromising food safety. Huxtable’s points out that it’s never had to recall a product, and some food scientists say the food contamination risks are no greater for packaged prepared foods than for fresh produce consumers prepare at home.

But experts say there’s always a small risk of contamination after fresh food is processed--from bacteria coming in from air conditioning vents or a careless worker--and that contamination can be aggravated if food is accidentally stored at the wrong temperature.

Although oxygen-free packages such as the kind Huxtable’s uses deprive certain bacteria such as salmonella the proper conditions to grow, they encourage the growth of less common Clostridium botulinum, which can cause paralysis and death. They also give bacteria such as Listeria monocytogenes more time to multiply. Listeriosis initially causes vomiting and diarrhea, but can develop into meningitis and encephalitis and cause spontaneous abortions in pregnant women.

Indeed, the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a January risk assessment blamed the surge in ready-to-eat foods for the recent leveling off of the huge reductions in listeriosis made in the 1990s.

Recently, Cafe St. Clair, a Colton-based maker of sandwiches and salads, was forced to recall all of its products sold under its Cafe St. Clair and Fresh to You brands after testing by the FDA and the U.S. Army revealed some products were contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

And just last week, Sara Lee Corp. pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was forced to pay $4.4 million for selling hot dogs and lunch meat that caused a 1998 listeriosis outbreak that killed 15 people and caused six miscarriages.

CDC epidemiologist Paul Mead says he is uncovering many more listeriosis outbreaks than before, although he believes it’s due to more accurate detection methods, such as DNA sample testing that has been set up in many areas.

‘Fresh’ in the Eyes of the Trademark Holder

Huxtable’s calls its long-life dinners “Fresh Selections,” a name that seems to flout the FDA’s definition of fresh because the ingredients are precooked.

John Haddock, Huxtable’s plant manager, says the name is not misleading because it is not a description of the product inside, just a brand name that was trademarked before the FDA’s rule was put in place.

An FDA official declined to talk about Huxtable’s situation, but said that having “fresh” in a brand name can be a problem. FDA sent a warning letter to juice maker Fresh Samantha this month accusing the company of misleading consumers by selling heat-pasteurized juice under its “fresh” brand name.

It took years of experimentation for Huxtable’s to extend the shelf life of its fresh-prepared meals from a week or two to one month, without sacrificing looks or taste.

To get there, Huxtable’s now cooks the ingredients after they are assembled instead of before, sucks the air out of its containers and replaces it with a mix of CO2 and nitrogen and has done away with more perishable ingredients such as green vegetables, which turned an unappetizing gray color.

“If you go and look at fresh [packaged] food, you won’t see a lot of vegetables because they won’t go the distance,” said Vicky Huxtable, the company’s founder.

Instead, Huxtable’s and other fresh-food makers use mainly starches, such as potatoes and rice, which do have a long shelf life.

If vegetables are used, they are either chopped up in little pieces and stuffed inside a dish, such as the bits of zucchini inside Huxtable’s ziti, or marinated to mask the color change and to fight bacteria, such as the grilled vegetables with balsamic vinegar.

The Right Ingredients Can Boost Taste, Safety

Huxtable’s has found that a little cheese, bacon, cream or other indulgent ingredient makes the product sell even better. A high sugar or salt content helps starve the bacteria and preserve the dishes even longer.

A recent batch of ambrosia salad was still fresh and flavorful at day 30, Huxtable says, largely because of the high sugar content and acid in the pineapple juice.

These technologies don’t necessarily mean that products are going to linger on shelves longer. Supermarkets are interested in moving them as quickly as possible.

However, these innovations reduce the amount of food retailers are forced to throw out or mark down, packaging experts say.

“It looks more attractive for the time frame they have it out there,” said Aaron L. Brody, a Duluth, Ga.-based packaging consultant.

Although the thought of a product sitting on a supermarket shelf for 30 days might put many people off, many food scientists contend that the nutrition lost in these long-shelf-life foods is negligible and the risk posed by them is far less than meals cooked from scratch at home.

Plant manager Haddock says Huxtable’s, which sells $15 million in meals a year, has never had to recall a product. “We have very good manufacturing practices, programs and a quality-control department that enforces it,” Haddock said.

To reduce their products’ exposure to harmful bacteria and give them a few months of shelf life, some manufacturers of precooked pot roasts, tri-tips and chicken dishes are cooking these meals in their packaging.

And processors of everything from pasta to chicken to beer have begun tinkering with the environment their products are sealed in, employing sensors to determine when conditions are ripe for germs. They also use “oxygen-scavenging packaging,” which uses iron or other chemicals to eliminate the air that leaks in and causes products to deteriorate or spoil.

Produce shippers are experimenting with edible films and dips that extend the life of cut fruit and vegetables from days to weeks and preserve their color. And super-absorbent diaper-like pads are being used in packages of cut-up tomatoes, watermelon and meat to soak up germ-encouraging moisture, Brody says.

A Ray of Hope for Processing Companies

Food processors are hoping that the FDA and USDA will begin allowing the use of irradiation on ready-to-eat precooked foods this summer to cut down on the incidence of pathogens such as listeria monocytogenes and extend shelf life by blasting away some of the spoilage microorganisms.

“What most people are looking at, to cover the extra cost of processing, is extending the shelf life two to three times as long,” said Jeffrey Barach, vice president of the National Food Processors Assn.

Indeed, irradiated lettuce stored in these modified-atmosphere containers can last 22 days, twice as long as untreated greens.

Brody believes that these innovations can make longer shelf-life foods even safer than many other fresh items.

Unfortunately, he adds, many of these new technologies also dull food aroma and flavor. “The packaging we have today can remove some of the desirable flavors and change the quality adversely.”

And some packages can change the taste and smell outright, such as the wasabi packaging used in Japan that manufacturers are testing here. The pungent mustard kills E. coli 0157:H7 germs but leaves its strong smell and taste on the food inside.

Brody and some packaging companies are trying to find a way to deal with odors that result from these longer shelf-life products, pinpointing the unpleasant odors that are safe to take out and those that are necessary indicators of spoilage.

But just as promising, he says, is new packaging he’s working on that will trick consumers’ noses into thinking the food they’re eating is at the peak of freshness. These packages contain small flavor capsules that burst when packaging is ripped open, releasing an appetizing aroma.

“It’s like what they put in [containers of] coffee and orange juice,” Brody said, referring to the processes by which beverage makers add concentrated aroma before sealing packages up. “It’s kind of like scratch-and-sniff.”

Some scientists worry that this technique could prevent consumers from spotting contaminated or spoiled food.

“That could be a bit deceptive,” said Michael Doyle, a University of Georgia food microbiologist. Such flavor capsules could block “the natural defense mechanism that tips us off that [a product is] unsafe.”

Big meat companies were some of the first to begin pushing the limits on packaging in the 1960s, employing vacuum-packaged containers to transport meat farther and keep in butcher departments longer.

Instead of buying sides of meat and cutting them up and repackaging them, Wal-Mart Stores and some other chains are going a step further, having processors ship chops and roasts in the tray they’ll be sold in.

These vacuum-packed trays add three weeks of shelf life to the cuts of meat, on top of the month or more that most meat is around after it is slaughtered. The meat doesn’t look too appetizing at this stage, with its purplish blood. But when managers get ready to sell it, they can peel off a film allowing oxygen in, and “bloom” the meat a red color.

New Techniques Help Fish Stay Fresh

At a food technologists’ conference this week in New Orleans, food scientists presented research that showed how this special packaging and a coating of acetate spray could make fresh cod fillets last 12 days.

Advances in hydrostatic high-pressure processing, which crushes harmful germs but allows food to bounce back, and pulsed-light processing, which kills surface bacteria with a super-powerful strobe light, also are expected to keep products on the shelf even longer.

But Deily says, outside of freezing or canning, there’s only so far they can go with packaging. “On fresh products you can only fool Mother Nature so long,” Deily said.

At some point, Nestle said, consumers will begin to notice what they’re missing, whether it’s flavor, taste or nutrition.

“Any time you start moving into processing and packaging and additives you are losing quality, and it’s just a question of how much and for how long,” Nestle said.