Most of the food we buy is packed in plastic, metal or other fabricated materials. That makes it easy to store and transport, but how can we be sure food packaging isn’t harmful to our health?

Substances in plastic containers make them flexible The information on cardboard boxes is printed in typographic paint. Should we be concerned that these chemicals are in contact with what we eat? To answer that question scientists at the Joint Research Centre in Italy are studying how various kinds of packaging and tableware interact with food, chemically.

“The packaging is made of lots of different materials. We have plastics, we have tinned goods in varnished metal, so we have materials that are not food, and there’s always a possibility that certain compounds of these materials could migrate, transfer into the food,” said Catherine Simoneau, a food chemist at the JRC and head of Europe’s reference laboratory for food contact materials (EURL-FCM).

Contact with food

It’s not just pac