Comparison of Organic Food Packaging in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Great Britain and Italy

The objective of this study was to provide a snapshot of organic food assortments in supermarkets in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy, and compare the packages used for five organic food products (eggs, meat, fish, mushrooms, berries). In addition, a comparison was made between packaging for regular and organic whole eggs. The highest number of organic products was found in the Danish supermarket. The main difference between the countries was in the use of national organic logos. Of the different food products, egg cartons had the most variation in materials and visual design. In all countries the product name was generally very plain, such as “organic beef”. The most common packaging material was plastic followed by molded pulp and glass. Green coloration was used especially on organic egg and mushroom packaging, whereas berry jams and meats were packed in conventional transparent packages. Molded pulp cartons, green color, and illustrations rather than photos were used more often for organic eggs than regular eggs. For faster recognition of organic products on the supermarket shelf, a standard dark green color is recommended to be used consistently to signify organic

Grammatical Morpheme Acquisition in 4-Year-Olds With Normal, Impaired, and Late-Developing Language

The production of the grammatical morphemes studied by Brown and his colleagues was examined in free speech samples from a cohort of 4-year-olds with a history of slow expressive language development (SELD) and a control group of normal speakers. Results suggest that children with SELD acquire morphemes in an order very similar to that shown in previous acquisition research. Children who were slow to begin talking at age 2 and who continued to evidence delayed expressive language development by age 4 showed mastery of the four earliest acquired grammatical morphemes, as would be expected, based on their MLUs, which fell at Early Stage IV. Four-year-olds with normal language histories produced all but one of the grammatical morphemes with more than 90% accuracy, as would be expected based on their late Stage V MLUs. Children who were slow to acquire expressive language as toddlers, but who caught up in terms of sentence length by age 4 did not differ in MLU from their peers with normal language histories. However, they had acquired fewer of the grammatical morphemes. The implications of these findings for understanding the phenomenon of slow expressive language development are discussed

Suitability of Active and Intelligent Packaging for Local and Organic Food – A Case Study in Southern Finland

This study explores the suitability of innovative packaging for local and organic food. Attitudes and opinions in local and organic food chains in Southern Finland were collected via eighteen semi-structural interviews. The respondents were small-scale producers and processors of fish, meat, berries, and mushrooms, wholesalers, retailers, and institutional kitchens. The aim of this study was to understand factors promoting and preventing the penetration of innovative packaging solutions into the organic and local food market. A clear majority (89%) of respondents considered active and intelligent solutions to be equally suitable for local and organic food as for conventional food. However, less than half would actually use the technologies in their own products

Influence of moisture on the performance of polyethylene coated solid fiberboard and boxes

Effects of moisture on the mechanical properties of one commercial solid fiberboard grade and on the compression strength of mill-fabricated transport boxes made from this material were studied. The solid fiberboard (1220 g/m2 ) has four middle layers made of old corrugated container (OCC). The middle layers are strongly internally sized with rosin sizing. The outer layers on both sides are made of bleached machine finished kraft paper. The kraft paper has extrusion coated low-density polyethylene (LDPE) doublelayer as moisture barrier. The six paper and paperboard layers are glued together in an industrial lamination process. The boxes have unusual design including double-panel walls and webbed corners, and they are used in wet and humid conditions for transporting fresh round fish. The transportation takes up to eight days at the ambient environment of 4°C and 90-100% RH. These conditions are taken as the framework of the study. Results show that the LDPE coating considerably slows down the transverse moisture penetration. The in-plane diffusivity (5.9·10-10 m2 /s, 27°C, 50/90% RH) was determined with an integrated unsteady state moisture transport model and was found to be nine times higher than the transverse diffusivity through the PE layer. Based on the diffusivity, water vapor can theoretically affect 80 mm from the open unsealed board edge during transport. Experiments show that liquid water penetrates 40-50 mm during eight days. In the middle of the sheet the moisture content increases moderately, approximately 0.3 percentage points during transport. The packaging producer’s main concern is thus to ensure that the open material edges are at least 80 mm away from the load bearing sections of the box. Due to uneven moisture penetration into the boxes, the average moisture of a box is a questionable measure of moisture pick-up. Instead one should consider the moisture content of the load bearing parts. The role of the adhesion layers in bending stiffness of the solid paperboard was modeled with laminate models. Results show that the adhesion layers affect the mechanical properties of the combined board and need to be addressed in the models. Best agreement with the measured bending stiffness values was obtained by a 11-layer model, where the properties of the adhesion layers are taken from the paper-glue-paper sandwich tests. The PE and kraft paper are regarded as one layer in the model. With this model, the calculated bending stiffnesses are close to the measured reference at 50% RH in MD (difference 1%). In 90% RH and in MD the results are 14% lower. Neglecting the adhesion layers gives 5% lower values in 50% RH and 18% in 90% RH compared to the reference measurement in MD. In each of the cases, the difference from reference is larger for the CD material direction. Three thickness measurement techniques (ISO, STFI, and SEM) were used to gather input data for the bending stiffness model. In this application, the ISO technique provided best results compared to the other techniques. It was found that the top-to bottom failure of a box can be expressed as a critical vertical displacement that is independent of moisture content. Similar results have been previously discovered when studying simpler structures like corrugated board panels and regular slotted containers (RSC). This research indicates that the strain dependent failure criterion also applies on more complex box structures. Keywords: paper laminates, solid fiberboard, moisture, mechanical properties, diffusivity, hygroexpansion, bending stiffness, box compression

Kalanterin polymeeritelojen pinnoitteen diagnostiikka

Paperin kalanteroinnissa suuntaus on selkeästi kohti polymeeripintaisia teloja. Nämä telat korvaavat yhä useammassa superkalanterissa paperitelat. Softkalanterissa on nimensä mukaisesti yksi tai useampi pehmeä polymeeritela. Pehmeiden telojen käyttöä puoltavat useat seikat. Tärkein niistä on pinnoitteen kestävyys. Pinnoitteeseen ei painu ajon aikana nippien läpi kulkevien vieraiden partikkeleiden jälkiä, mistä syystä hiontavälit ovat suhteellisen pitkät. Polymeeripinnoite vaurioituu vakavasti, jos se ylikuormittuu ja ylikuumenee. Useassa tapauksena vaurion aiheuttaa hot spotiksi kutsuttu ilmiö. Sillä tarkoitetaan pinnoitteen paikallista kuumenemista. Toistaiseksi valvonta ei kata telan pinnoitetta kokonaisuutena. Tässä työssä tutkittiin, mitä menetelmiä nykyinen tekniikka tarjoaa pinnoitteen käytön aikaisen vaurioitumisen estämiseksi. Joittenkin menetelmien soveltumista kokeiltiin käytännössä. Sopivan menetelmän löytyminen mahdollistaisi telapinnoitteen automaattisen diagnostiikan. Telapinnoitetta valvotaan perinteisesti pistemäisillä lämpötilamittauksilla. Pistemittauksilla havaitaan kuitenkin vain telan ympäri kiertävät pantamaiset ilmiöt. Paikallisten kuumentumien havaitsemiseksi vaaditaan menetelmältä erityisiä ominaisuuksia tai järjestelyjä. Työn tärkeänä osana pohdittiin niitä vaatimuksia, joita prosessin luonne asettaa mittausmenetelmälle. Vaatimuksista vaikein on telan suuri pyörimisnopeus. Koska hot spotin kehittyminen alkaa yleensä taustaan verrattuna erivärisistä tarttumista ja koska hot spot nimensä mukaisesti kehittää lämpöä, on kameratekniikka näkyvän valon tai infrapunan alueella yksi ratkaisu valvontaan. Näkyvän valon kamerat ovat käytännössä kaikki videosignaalia tuottavia CCD-kameroita. Suurimmassa osassa lämpökameroita kuva muodostetaan käyttämällä mekaanisesti liikkuvia peilejä. Kameratekniikkaan liittyy läheisesti kuvankäsittely. Kolmantena vaihtoehtona käsiteltiin värähtelymittausten soveltamista diagnostiikkaan. Johtoajatus on, että kohouma telan pinnalla aiheuttaa laakeripesistä mitattavissa olevan säännöllisen iskun. Työssä käsiteltiin halutun informaation erottamista havaintomenetelmän tuottamasta tiedosta. Käytännön kokeiden perusteella parhaimmalta ratkaisulta pinnoitediagnostiikkaongelmaan vaikuttaa värähtelymittausten käyttö. Toimiva värähtelyjen mittaukseen perustuva järjestelmä on mahdollista saada aikaiseksi muihin vaihtoehtoihin perustuvia järjestelmiä nopeammin

Strength and Barrier Enhancements of Cellophane and Cellulose Derivative Films: A Review

Cellulose derivatives, i.e. cellulose functionalized in a solvent state with various side groups, are an important source of biomaterials for food packaging. This review considers the following materials: i) cellophane, ii) cellulose acetate, iii) methylcellulose, and iv) carboxymethylcellulose. Mechanical and barrier properties are important for freestanding packaging films as well as for coatings. The potential of the selected cellulose derivatives and cellophane is thus examined from the viewpoint of their tensile properties as well as their moisture and oxygen barrier properties. The capacity of microcrystalline cellulose and nano-sized celluloses to reinforce the films and to help impede gas diffusion is examined for microfibrillar celluloses, nanocrystalline celluloses, and whiskers. Very good oxygen barrier properties have been reported for cellophane. Nanocellulose fillers have regularly been shown to enhance the tensile properties of several cellulose derivatives, but the effects on the water vapor permeability (WVP) have been studied less often

Fibrous composites prepared by airlaying

This work describes the use of the airlaying process as a manufacturing method for fibrous composites from cellulose. Relatively dense composite sheets were prepared with the short fiber airlaying technique from fluff pulp (75 wt% and 25 wt%) and conventional thermoplastic PP/PE bicomponent fibers (25 wt% and 75 wt%) as a mixture of 3mm and 12 mm long fibers. The effect of the fiber mixture ratios on the tensile and impact strength properties of composites was investigated. The results show that these properties were proportional to weight ratios of components